Turbo Cole

Hello,
I decided to go manual steering and followed a post on how to do it. Everything went smooth and I got it all bolted in, with the wheels and tires straight. The only problem is that it turns to the right a quarter turn of the wheel more than the left.
When the wheels are straight the steering wheel is straight. To the left, the steering wheel spins one and a quarter revolutions. To he right it spins one and a half revolutions. I thought I may hav accidentally swapped the left and right inner tie rods, but from what I can tell they are the same part number and I marked then when I took them off.

What did I do wrong?

Thanks for the help.

Spalato

iTrader: (33)

I'm also very interested in this. I will be doing a manual conversion of my rack as well and I would really like to avoid the above issue.

I just bought a set of inner and outer tie rods and they look identical, I don't think they are side specific.

I'm a noob so I might be completley off but I believe if the length of your inner and out tie rods is different from side to side this might indicate that the steering rack was not centered properly...try looking at the tie rods threads remaining on each side and see if you can notice a difference?

Turbo Cole

It turns out that I didn't mark where the quill joins to the steering shaft when I took it apart. After reconnecting the part many times I finally got it in the right spline position and everything works perfect now with even ammounts of steering on both sides.
I would recommend the switch to manual. I like the feel better and it cleans up the engine bay a fair bit and allows you to run just one belt off the main pulley. If you have questions about it, feel free to PM me.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

I almost did this to my own rack but decided I didn't want to forever alter my rack to the point of no return to power. I've been trained in hydraulics and dealing with hydraulics is something I do on my job on a daily basis.

I was just about to pull my rack when I decided to explore the loop line way of doing it. I kept thinking about everyone's reasoning behind not doing the loop line. It was said that doing the loop line only allows the fluid to push back around to the other side of the rack however, it's that internal piston still pushing the fluid around that causes the resistance. That's when I became to wonder what about those fittings on the rack that allow the fluid to flow out and into it (where loop lines are attached). So I took one of them off and noticed the orfice size. Then I looked at the hard line itself and noticed how even smaller it was. Based on what I was trained, I knew right then that if I was gonna try the loop line that I needed to install a line that had the largest internal diameter I could put on it (or at least something matching the orfice of that fitting. See when you push around hydraulic fluids through a small restrictive line, your gonna have resistance because the fluid can't be compressed. It's not the piston that's the issue, it's the smaller loop section that's causing most of the resistance.

The rack fitting was very strange and I struggled to find something bigger to screw in its place that had a larger orfice. I had no luck so I decided to modify the fitting. I cut the top section off the rack fitting and took a Parker #6 male JIC by #4 boss fitting and cut the o-ring threaded section off. I then welded the upper #6 JIC male half section of that Parker fitting to the bottom half of the cut rack fitting. I did this to both fittings and screwed them back into the rack. I then made a #6 Parker hydraulic hose to use as the loop line. Now I have a much larger 3/8" orficed line so that internal piston can push the hydraulic fluid through. I couldn't believe how easy this was to do once I figured it out. Driving around, the steering effort is extremely low. Now I don't have experience with the loop lines of past doings but I do know that the steering effort is far less than what I experienced when I broke my power steering pulley and drove the fd around for a week without power steering. I live that this is reversible.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

I have more pics on my old phone but this was the only one my new phone. I've been thinking about doing a write up.