John, its sounds like your steering column mounts need checking and the
front end aligning. When the rubber bushes are replaced it takes some
care and skill to compress them so that the rack is firmly attached to
the frame and side to side movement is eliminated. There are flanges
that stop the rack moving about too much but even slight movement makes
the steering vague.
When the Gooparts or any other mounts are fitted there is no adjustment.
The goal is to not allow the rack to move. All lateral adjustment is via
the track rod ends. The Goodparts mounts are a good part :-), don't be
put off by the discussion of the fixing bolts.
In general the front end needs aligning whenever you do any major work
on the steering or suspension.
Stan
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-6pack@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-6pack@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of John VanNorman
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 8:55 AM
Subject: Steering rack mounting questions
Maybe someone can confirm my thoughts here. I've noticed that the
passenger side front tire on my car extends out from
the side of the car further than the driver side tire. Also, the
steering wheel itself doesn't sit completely level
when driving straight (i.e., it is turned to the left slightly).
However, when driving it I've never really noticed any
problems with the car drifting to one side or the other. I'm not an
expert on front end alignment, but it seems to me
that maybe the steering rack has shifted ever so slightly to the
passenger's side. And what reconfirms my thoughts is
the fact that in the bin of old parts the previous owner gave me, there
are two old rubber steering rack mountings -
which leads me to think he replaced the old ones and in doing so didn't
get the steering rack back on properly. Am I
crazy? Are there other more likely explanations?
On a related note, those of you that have installed the Goodparts alloy
steering rack mounts, since it is so hard to
screw in the bolts, what steps are you taking to insure that the
steering rack is perfectly aligned when you tighten
everything down? With as difficult as it sounds to install them, it
doesn't seem like it would be easy to adjust things
later on.
John V.
1974 1/2 TR6
CF28149
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