Shifted Leaf Spring

Caster angle is one thing that causes lazy or tight steering. If it is too low you will have light feel. I really can't say about the noise you heard, but suspect something slipped out of place on the steer axle. Do you have access to the results of the alignment they did?

 

Are your spring hanger bushings and pins bad. Just replaced one on old Pete with close to 1m miles. Tilts spring and leafs were moving.

 

My freightliner did that. Power steering filter blew apart , clean the resivoir and new filter. Solve the problem

 

Without pictures I'll just be shooting in the dark.

Springs are ###### important. But frankly there are several ways they can break that will OOS them. How to fix depends on where you are.

 

The spring out of "alignment" typically gets a fix it ticket.Probably needs a new center bolt in the spring pack although most just hammer back into place.