Originally Posted by
Stresd
There is No bushing in any Ram steering gear. There is a large sector shaft bearing in all Dodge Ram steering gears. The 94-02 Ram is essentially a Chev/Gmc 2500/3500 Duramax steering gear. In the duramax, that gear is good for at least 250,000 k. In the ram the same gear with out a DSS, you will be lucky to get 100,000k out of it. In 2003- 08 they changed to a Ford Steering gear. Pretty much the same gear that is in a 1998 plus Ford F-250/350/450 Diesel. In a stock Ford, the gear is usually good for 250-300,000k. In the 03-08 Ram I see lots of failures about 80,000. This tells me it is not so much the steering gear, but the design of the Dodge Rams front end that is killing these steering gears. So bad that the assembly line steering remanufactures, like Cardone, ran out of 03-08 dodge steering gear cores. Started supplying Ford F150 steering gears with line adapters and different mounting bolts for the Dodge rams. Used the f-150 gear because it had the same 9 spline input shaft as the 03-08 Rams. As I stated before, a DSS must be installed on any Dodge Ram from 1994- current if you want to have a steering gear last in that truck. Also there is a really nice steering linkage upgrade available for the 03-13 rams. Changes from the stock linkage Y set up, to a far superior T setup much improving the trucks driveability and helping to alleviate castor shimmy . Doesn't solve all of it all but feed back says it really improves.