If you're lucky coyotedav, yours is getting old and frozen up and you'll feel a lot better when you remove it. If not though, they sometimes make very little difference in overall ease.
We'll cross our fingers for old and tired.
Is your box original or rebuilt by any chance? With mine, a new box made the most difference in how easy the truck was to steer.
I noticed only a slight difference in steering ease with the stabilizer removed, so I put it back on (just because) and ran with it for many years, until finally removing it for good.
It can't hurt to take it off for a test at least. That way it'll give you a chance to inspect things and see how the rest of the system works without it.
Up to the point that I replaced my box, I really didn't think anything was wrong. I was young and figured that armstrong steering was the normal way of things. When I had my first death-wobble incident though, I started replacing things to narrow it down.
New box didn't do anything for the wobble, but what a change in feel! It was like velvet. And easy? Wow!!!! All of a sudden I could steer with one hand at very slow speeds and parking was fun again.
Ran 85w/140 synthetic gear lube in it and it worked great for many years until I sold it just a couple of years ago. I owned my Bronco since it was 6 years old and had 68k miles on it and even then it never felt as good as it did with the new box.
So, if yours is hard to steer, hopefully removing the stabilizer will help, but there are probably going to be plenty of other things involved in the equation.
So, how are your arms these days? Getting to look more like Arnie and Popeye than normal?
Paul
