Been having an issue with some vibration in the front end. I couldn't find anything obviously loose. In the process of yanking on front end parts I did find the factory tie rods were extremely flexible. Just grabbing them with ny fingers I can flex them out of line by almost a 1/2". This was the only source of any unwanted movement I could find. Over the weekend I reworked them to make the assembly much stiffer. I basically chopped the ends off the factory tie rods and welded them into to some 1" OD x 1/4" wall tubing. No way these things are moving. No verdict yet on if it helped or not. I still need to paint them and get em back on the truck.
Had my tires road force balanced yesterday and that solved 90% of the vibration. The regular balancer didn't catch some out of round/balance issue on one tire. Put a ton more weight on one of them. Took the truck for a test spin last night and vibration is 90% gone. I don't think the tie rods helped any with that. They did improve the steering feel and rut following quite a bit. The truck just turns better and more precisely.