Play in wheel

Hello everyone....in the past couple of days my steering wheel has developed a lot of play in it, its so bad that when I hit a small bump in the road it feels like I've lost control of the steering, could someone tell me what's wrong?

Block the rear wheels. With the vehicle in park and the motor running have somebody turn the wheel back and forth watch the tie rod ends and other
parts for excessive movement. If you don't do your own work take it to your alignment shop. This could be dangerous.

It also could be a bad steering rack/pinion gear. Also once I had a boot over the inner tie rod develop a hole and let water in Broke the inner tie rod, well rusted it out.

Thank you everyone!!! I'll give both suggestions a try....

Hi,

the safe way to start with, is to jack each side of the front end up, separately, and check for wheel play in both directions - top bottom is usually an upper ball joint, and left right play is usually either a tie rod end or lower ball joint -

if you have little or no play, then, I'd go deeper into the steering system as suggested... These vans are notorious for Lower Ball Joints failing - I have a 1989, and have replaced them about 4 times now - I think it was a design fault - same with a 14 inch wheel for basicly a TRUCK - front brakes last maybe 20K if you are lucky - just my 2 pennies