Need truck help/Bad range day

[MichiganMilitia]

Disclaimer: If you don't want to read about my crappy time at the range, skip ahead to the 2nd part.

Part 1:
Well today turned out to be a beautiful day at the south shooting site. Too bad everything else didn't work out so well. I took the service road way down about .5 mile and found a good unoccupied place to shoot. I wanted to do some drills to practice quicker target acquisition and accuracy with my AR. I set up three cardboard cut-outs (hand-cut to mimic the USPSA targets) on some wooden stands that I made last weekend. I had them set at various ranges from approx 20-60 yds. Everything was looking great. I have a MOLLE vest that is configured to carry eight 30rd mags. I put this on and got ready to load up my mags. I grab the unopened shipping box that I had picked up earlier in the week and opened it up to find a .50cal ammo can filled with ammo just like I had ordered. Open the ammo can and I don't see 1000rds of M193 5.56 ammo like I expected. Instead, I am greeted with 1000rds of 7.62x39 (looks Russian - See pictures below.) So now I'm thinking "great, they sent me the wrong stuff". Luckily, I ordered 2000rds, so I went to the second box and opened it, only to find more 7.62x39.

Here's what I was expecting to find in my boxes:

Here is what I was surprised with:


So now I have 2000 rds of good AK ammo, and no ammo for my AR. I spent all that time driving out there and setting up for nothing... So I pack up all my gear, targets, and guns and get ready to leave.


Part 2:
So I'm packed up and I pull away in my '01 Silverado that I just purchased 2 months ago. I got it in great condition with 70k miles for $10.5k Everything on the truck has worked beautifully up to this point. As I'm pulling out of the shooting area, I notice that my steering is getting a little clumsy and the wheel is getting harder to turn. By the time I make it out to the paved road (hwy 67) my arms are getting tired. I feel like I'm going to break off my steering wheel. I can turn the wheel about 10 degrees in either direction without any trouble, but any more than that is a feat of epic proportions. I managed to get back to the Springs and back home, but my truck is almost impossible to park because it takes superhuman strength to turn the wheel.
All my fluid levels are exactly where they should be, including my power steering fluid. I'm not leaking anything. To the best of my knowledge, I did not bottom out or hit anything while I was driving on the trail at the shooting site. My undercarriage has no noticeable damage and nothing looks out of the ordinary. No weird smells or anything. My belt system appears to be fine. The only weird noise is when I am cranking the wheel to turn and I hit a bump. The noise sounds like stress from something rubbing.


-Like I said, nothing looks abnormal. I'm not leaking any fluids. I don't think I hit anything or bottomed out (I have skidplates anyway). Belts look fine. Any ideas what might be wrong? My guess is a steering pump, but I'm not a greasemonkey.

-I'm pretty new to the Colorado Springs area, so if you have a trusted mechanic you'd like to recommend, I would really appreciate it. I'm pretty savvy with tools and working with my hands, so if this is something I can fix myself, I'd like to take that route.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to my crappy Saturday. I hope yours went better. Any advice or recommendations would really be helpful. Thanks guys.


Here's to better times -->

[BPTactical]

Power Steering pump crapped the bed.
Usually they will whine prior but not always.
Bummer dude.
Looked at the bright side-You still have lotsa ammo

[hobowh]

this happened to me in my tahoe it was the pump, was about 350 installed at pepboys.

[Ridge]

Pump crapped out or you blew a line. I did the latter in my old Pontiac a few years ago...made driving up Parker Rd at night going home very interesting....

[MarkCO]

Probably the pump. But jack up the front and make sure the wheel assemblies are not sloppy. The Silverados can dump wheel assemblies and it causes a lot of tow out which affects steering, slight possibility this is your problem...They are pretty easy to replace:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/99-00...%3D5%26ps%3D63

[jerrymrc]

And I almost went up to the south site today after work. I am on the south side and A&P off of "B-street" has always done me fair. Only fix what ya want and a good price to boot. P.S. the body shop there is owned by someone else and I would NOT recommend them. They just lease space.

They do allot of Solders cars and there has never been any claim of being ripped off.

[theGinsue]

Might also want to check the status of your steering stabilizer shock. This is the shock absorber that sits horizontally in front of your front end axle.
Here's a pic to give you some reference (NOTE: The one in this pic is not a stock setup):



I had one that got damaged and then another one that went bad - in both cases I had the same type of steering issues that you're describing.

If this is the cause of your problem they cost about $50 for a good one and they are very easy to remove/install yourself.

[clublights]

I'd agree it's the pump 90% .. in my experience the steering stabilizer will go "soft" and not often go "hard" but to test that just pop one end of it off tie it up outta the way start the truck up and see if the wheels move normally. only other thing I can think of would be the steering box itself going to hell on ya but that seems unlikely unless you bashed it into something. not sure how to test that other then to replace the pump and if the problem is not solved then replace the box. but I don't think that's the problem since you can turn the wheels at all ( tho hard to do you CAN crank the wheel and make em turn lock to lock right ? if you jack the truck up and put it on jack stands so both front wheels are off the ground you should be able to turn em pretty easy without starting the truck ) .

If you can do most basic work I'd say you can do the Pump on your own .. just pick up the Haynes or Chilton Manual ( should be able to grab it at any auto parts store in stock .. check a few of em if the first place don't have it before ya buy online or something )

Probably a couple hour / 2 6-pack kinda job.

[MichiganMilitia]

Thanks for the support fellas. Any other mechanic recommendations or suspected problems?

Look at the bright side-You still have lotsa ammo

Yes, but unfortunately, I paid the 5.56 price ($340 per 1k) but I got the 7.62 ammo which is normally priced at $210 per 1k. I'm not about to swallow a $260 loss because of their mistake. And besides... I don't even have an AK.

[68Charger]

Yes, but unfortunately, I paid the 5.56 price ($340 per 1k) but I got the 7.62 ammo which is normally priced at $210 per 1k. I'm not about to swallow a $260 loss because of their mistake. And besides... I don't even have an AK.

I wonder if somewhere somebody else is either ticked that they have ammo that doesn't fit their AK, or they're stoked because they got ammo worth 50% more than they paid... looks like the pictures from Classicarms? on the off chance they want to work something out where you don't ship it back, I'd be interested- that's Yugoslavian ammo.. corrosive, but loaded hot & pretty accurate (for 7.62) I've had several boxes of it before..

on the truck, I agree it's probably the pump- a quick search found some instances of the input shaft shearing off on that make/model.. Requires pump replacement to fix it... only mechanic I can recommend is down in Florence.