First of all... I am new here. Been driving for about six years now so I am still somewhat ignorant about some things, I will conceed that. But... I am currently driving a 2003 International day cab and the company I work for has its own in-house shop. The mechanics there don't do the big jobs on our tractors and dang near refuse to work on the trailers. ( I am venting but I will get to my point) About six months ago I showed one of our mechanics the concern I had about the steering shaft. It seemed loose at the spline. If you were to hold the bottom half of the shaft and turn the top half... there was some movement. Also, you could wiggle it back and forth a little as well. This caused a great deal of vibration while at idle and son of a gun was there a lot of slop in the steering wheel. I was told that there was no way to fix the problem and not knowing any different I went on my merry way.

Now five weeks ago I had had enough. I refused to drive the dang thing until they replaced the steering shaft and on Monday of this week they finally fixed it. They mantained that it was not wore out and that I was crying about nothing.

Am I wrong??? To me it was worn out six months ago. All they did from that point till it was replaced was to fill it full of grease and wait till it beat itself out of grease.

Next time I am just gonna stop at the scale house.

 

It should have been fixed as soon as the looseness in the spline was detected during your PTI.

Things like that are not only dangerous but will get you put OOS if a DOT inspector sees it.

 

Thanks, I didn't think I was wrong. I had talked to my boss about the dang thing and he really didn't seem to be all that concerned about it. So, as I said before... next time the boys in the shop get lazy and would rather ignore the problem, I will just have Mr. DOT Inspector take a looksee. BTW... my tractor had already been through two Pre-Maintenance Inspections....oil change tire inspection...supposedly the whole work-up. Both of them were done AFTER I had showed our mechanic the problem. If they don't care....well, I can play that game too.

 

If the vibration were due to the loose splines, then turning the wheel slightly (or more) left or right should take the noise out, but i'm gonna guess it didn't take the noise away?

Some free movement in the steering shaft splines can be normal. IH did have some reverberating/droning/growling noise issues in the their 9000 series cause by the steering shaft... not a saftey issue to my knowledge....... now the shakers on the other hand, their steer shafts were dangerous!

 

Well, the noise and vibration DID go away just as soon as some pressure was placed on the shaft by turning the wheel slightly. I have talked to a couple of independent mechanics since I posted this origially and showed them the short video clip I have of the slop that I recorded with my cell phone. They informed me that, by what they saw, it wouldn't have taken much to bind it up and then I would have had no steering because it would have stripped out the rest of the way.

I feel loved at work.

 

my daycab columbia steering wheel shakes all over the place. i write it up and penske neevr fixes shit. ugh

 

I had a somewhat similar problem with steering in my 2004 International and I found the company shop (I'm an owner-op) is pretty ignorant. Nowadays I take the truck to CAT (my engine is CAT) for quality engine work, and TA truck stops for regular PMs (our shop charger more than TA for regular oil change). Company shops are usually swarmed with work, and the mechanics tend not to care about your truck.