How do you test your front CA bushings?

[Mudeprived]

I am not sure how to test to see if these bushings needs to go. I am chasing down a wobble/clunk up front but it is difficult to tell if it's the CA bushings. The lower bushings appear cracked when looking at them from ground up but not deteriorated/fubar.

Some of the symptoms...

I am parked on a hill and have to reverse down. As soon as I put it in R I get a clunk right below my feet. The front end has felt loose for some time and going down my bumpy road has the steering wheel wobbling left and right. The steering will jerk a bit on bumps if the tires hit the bump at different times. It sorta feels like bumpsteer.

My rack is one year old from Detroit Axle and has never been tight from day one. I get a clunk in and out of the box when i push the tire at 3 and 9. I also had the same clunk from my factory box so I dunno if that is normal. I am coming from Jeeps and their steering boxes had a similar clunk, which was a normal amount of play when the vehicle was off.

Normally on a jeep I would just pop off the arms and inspect. They are simple to remove like the rear arms of these rigs but it is not that simple up front with IFS so what are methods to test these bushings? I have seen people use go pro cams set up to watch for movement but I do not have this kind of tech.

This is a 99 with 173k.
One year old Toyota Ball joints
One year old Detroit Axle (new) steering box
New 4600's but old factory upper bushings.

Any thoughts?

(Note: there is no play in my steering shaft)

 

[St Runner]

Checking the control arms is difficult because of the tension of spring. The professional way to check is to pry with a crowbar. The only problem with this method is if you are a layperson and have never done it before you don't really know how much tension and movement is ok. A foolproof method but one that is a bit more work is to remove the swaybar end links, the four bolts for the lower ball joint and the bottom bolt of the shock. This will take all the tension off the spring (With the truck on jack stands with the tire removed of course) With no tension its easy to tell how much play is in the control arm bushings. I went through all this with my old truck, no matter how I pried or pulled it seemed fine, But with the spring tension removed it just flopped around

 

[wshiverick]

A common symptom is the truck wanting to pull one direction or the other when braking.

 

[wshiverick]

If its the control arm bushing making that clunking noise they would be obviously shot. Check your driveshaft u joints and tcase and diff bearings maybe.

 

[Mudeprived]

A common symptom is the truck wanting to pull one direction or the other when braking.

Now that you mentioned it, it does pull to the right when braking hard.