Play in steering wheel

My son is working on his H3 and there is a lot of play in the steering wheel when you turn it. The hubs are good. And I am looking for ideas on what would cause this. The truck has 67k miles and gets wheeled hard.

Steering rack could be shot or it could be a loose upper and/or intermediate steering shaft. Check the lower shaft here it bolts to the steering rack to see if it's loose where it connects there. That's where I checked mine for looseness after I read about it elsewhere that the way it was designed it shouldn't be able to come off while the bolt is still attached but there may some looseness/play there causing it to kind of bob up and down & allowing slack to be felt through the steering wheel.

Hey Auggie,
That bolt he mentions threads out of one side of a clevis then you pull on it and it threads out of the other side. I like the way that is captive. It also fits thru a concave or half circle notch in the shaft. However it is a very small bolt. I think I remember it being an 11 mm head. It was originally installed with thread locker. I guess if it somehow had come partially out it could allow some slack or slop. I check mine often and now I'm thinkin about it!
Some of that could be the inner ball joint on the tie rod.
If the rack bushing is good and you know how to check it, then the upper a-arm bushings can be part of it. Could even be the ball joints. Probably a combination of things. You may know that you have to replace the entire upper a-arm but the lower ball joint I believe is replaceable.
You have not taken this offroad right?:giggle:
Just some ideas to check unless you have been banned from the shop!!
I usually try to refrain from sticking these in a post at the risk of being redundant, like 999 but for you I will. ha ha
You can barely see the tiny bolt up above the rack.
I'm having Photobucket stability problems or my computer but these are all videos except the tie rod.
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[URL=http://s913.photobucket.com/albums/ac336/DHunter_bucket/?action=view&current=20110306181501.mp4]
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I have some movement in my upper bushings but the steering is ok for now.
Not sure how much play here is acceptable.
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Thanks hunner and big unit.Since the closing of hummer We lost all the techs i trust so I have to fix everything myself. I am by no means a mechanic so I am learning as we go. I dont have faith in the GM dealers around here. They really dont like to work on hummers and find every reason not to. I will be off tommarow and will try to look at everything with my son