For the idler and pitman arm and the tie rods, you should see no movement at all in the joints. Your truck will have to be on jackstands (frame not suspension) to verify if the components are bad or not.

To check the idler and pitman arms, you must grab the drag link with your hand and try to move it up/down fore/aft any any other way you can think of. If it moves, try to isolate it to one component or the other, or maybe both. But there shouldn't be any play in it whatsoever.

You should be able to tell if these components are bad from driving the truck, the steering should be really loose (lots of steering wheel motion before truck motion).

Scott '85 Tan M998