Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:03:48 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: steering rack u-joint
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reply-type=original
I havn't seen those wear ever.
( I can come up with a good used one though )
factors, that I can see, contirbuting to wear on that part, besides sheer
age...
or running with not-so-hot shocks,
tires out of balance, or tires or wheels out of round,
or no offenee...........believe it or not, clumsy heavy-handed steering.
I wouldnt' think this myself, but I let a guy use a vanagon of mine for
about a year and bit once......
non-power steering.
when I got it back it had a solid two inches of steeing play at the edge of
the steering wheel.
which I thought was weird since vangons almost never get steering play much
.......they get worn tie rod ends, sure ......but for play to develope, like
slop in the linkage , that doesn't really happen much.
Then one day I watched this same guy.........who weighs about 350 lbs at
least, back his own van out of my shop......
and when it came time to turn the steering wheel, he *jerked* the sterring
input. Of course at low speed, that's rough on the steering linake.
And I don't mean just pull in the direction he wanted to steer, I mean 'jerk
it', like hard.
I am reasonably certain that his rough handling of the steering like that,
especially at zero miles per hour is what did it to my van- - created wear
like that. .
In that case it was where the tie rod ends come out of the steering
rack......
completely ovaled out there, just ruined the rack.
I've been saving an entire good used power steering rack, with the shaft
that goes forward to the 'V' steering box up in there ......a part you'd
never know was there , and the shaft has that u-joint in it.
I'll have to check if a non-PS u-joint is the same.
the two shafts, PS versus non-PS are slightly different, and the u-joint
might be too. Not sure if I want to break up the set, as it makes a perfect
set to convert a non-PS vanagon to PS.
scott
www.turbovans.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Lail" <wklail@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:40 PM
Subject: steering rack u-joint
> Greetings everyone,
>
> Recently when driving slowly on rough dirt roads I noticed a knocking,
> rattling sound that I can feel in the steering. Today when I arrived
> home (and after I washed away tons of mud), I crawled under my bus and
> it seems that the u-joint that connects to the power steering rack is
> quite worn and loose. Is this something that generally wears and
> needs replacing? It looks like it is attached to the steering rack
> and to a rod running forward by a couple of integrated clamp-like
> things with bolts through them. Hard to replace? Source for the
> part?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Warren in Santa Fe
> 88 Westy
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