Hard steering

[legotech7]

Hello all. At it again on my68 buggy. My issue is , the buggy is very hard to steer. Every thing in the front is brand new. From knuckle to knuckle. Lowered adjustable beam, new steering box, tie rod ends, new damper. Tires are inflated to 18 psi. It has a new steering chevy style column. With all this, I cannot steer the damb thing from right to left with out putting some muscle to it. I adjusted the steering box because it had some play at the steering wheel. I'd say about an inch of play. Still hard to steer. What could be my issue, or is it possible I may have missed something?...Any Ideas on what could be a problem?... Thanks......

[joemama]

If you adjusted the steering box too tight, it will be very hard to steer. I assume you are balljoint. It could take a while for tight balljoints to loosen up.

[jspbtown]

^^Yup....steering box too tight (trying to make 50 year technology similar to what new cars have) or ball joints tight. Did you install ball joints for dropped beams?

Maybe try lifting it to the max by adjusting the beam and see if that makes things better?

[legotech7]

No ball joints. Its a link pin beam. I did adjust the steering box trying to take out the slop in the steering wheel . I will try to loosen it up but and hope the excess play will take care of its self. We'll see and post results.

[EVfun]

[oprn]

Wide tires and big wheel/wheel adapter offsets make a BIG difference! Get down to a 185 or narrower tire, get rid of the adapters and run a wheel that has close to stock offset. Not only will it be lighter on the steering in parking lots but it will also track way better on the highway.
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[slalombuggy]

I see a picture in you gallery labeled "king pin rebuild, spindles won't budge"........if you didn't get your spindles moving freely to the point that you can move them with a finger then that is probably your issue, on top of the huge scrub radius created by your front wheel offset and wide tires. And no, tight king pins will not break in.

And as others have pointed out, you may have over tightened your steering box.

[legotech7]

Thanks guy for your responses. So the pictures you may have observed are older . The tires I have on the buggy now are 165/60/15's Much narrower than the ones on there before. I replaced rack & pinion the a new box. Had to add grease to the box, as it came dry. I believe I might have tightened the box a bit too much. I rebuilt the king pins as too instructions I got from this forum and some you tube videos, made sure the spindles were tuning freely, so I don't think that is my problem. I will go out and readjust the box and see what happens, and post results. I heard that some of these box are junk straight out of the box. I hope that's not the case. It wasn't cheap!.....Will post with results. Thanks again.......
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[legotech7]

Today, upon further inspection, I took the box out to see if turning the adjusting one way or the other, I might have damaged the worm gear on the in side. but turning it by hand, it freely turned left to right with ease. It didn't seem to be damaged at all. But I know nothing about these boxes, so I could be wrong. I doubled checked my set up from the steering column on down to the u joints I used to connect to the steering box and everything was loose and turning ok. No binding or anything like that!. So I go and check the steering wheel and try to turn it, and man, it was hard to turn! So this was an after market GM column I got through the interweb. S I'm saying the column is junk and I'm SOL...I take the wheel off. its a grant style steering that you have to use with the adapter. I put the wheel back on and low and behold, I turn the wheel left to right and she turns smooth as butter. Could I have tightened a bit too much the first time ? Something in the mix is not right. I'm confused at this point. Where did I go wrong? If any of you guys have any Idea, please enlighten me. Sorry about the lengthy post, but I had to explain. Thanks again..

[EVfun]

I've got nothing helpful on a GM steering column, my buggies have used '62 - '67 Bug columns. There is this thread over in the type 3 forum that goes into these steering boxes in great detail, including adjustment. The worm gear is ground so that the box gets just slightly tight at the center of travel and is supposed to be loose if it's one turn left or right of strait ahead. The car trying return to going strait so you don't feel that, except in static testing while adjusting the box.
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[legotech7]

EVfun,.. Great info, thanks so much...

[legotech7]

A friend who owns a vw parts store, told me some times, if you don't position the box at a correct angle, that it might tend to bind and hard to steer. He suggested I try to loosen the box and move it up or down and checking it at the steering wheel for ease of movement. I asked if I had to loosen the the nuts at the tie rod ends. He said, what ever it takes to get the wheels moving as they should. And if that didn't help, he said that the box might be at fault after all. Opinions please?.......

[slalombuggy]

DO NOT LOOSEN THE TIEROD NUTS. Anyone who gives that advice is an idiot. Tie rod pins are tapered for a reason, so tgat they lock into the steering arm. If the pins are seized in the tie rod ends they are to be replaced.

My steering box is tilted to get better geometry on my tierods to reduce bump steer. I don't have any issues, but it may somehow increase steering effort in some instances, but I don't know how.

[legotech7]

slalombuggy. He didn't say to loosen the tie rods, but just to move the box around either up or down, or even left to right slightly.. And that actually seemed to help some. the box was leaning to low if you can visualize that, moved it up some , and I was able to turn the wheel with a bit more ease. Went to car show over the week end, and there were some buggy's there, and one guy did an EPS conversion on his. I was amazed as to how easy his buggy steered. That's the way to go. It looked like an easy swap, and cheap.