GSPORT96

I am changing my 74 road race vette from power steering to manual.
I want to remove the Steering Couple (rag joint) and put a steel
joint in it's place. It seems there is two different sizes from steering shaft and the steering box. Anybody know the sizes of these two shafts? Any ideas who may sell one. Thanks Mike W---

RunningMan373

Jim Shea, a ex-Corvette steering engineer, commented on this same idea, about a month ago. his point was that it isn't a good idea, because the pasenger compartment moves on it's body mounts, were as the steering column and the steering box are fixed to their respective bases,, the frame and the pass compartment,, making a solid steering coupling the only non flexing point between the two.

Jim Shea

Admittedly the flexible coupling doesn't have a lot of "give" to it. But it does allow for limited body to frame motion particularly on vehicles like the C2/C3 where the steering gear is coupled directly to the steering column. The cardon universal joint part has virtually no give in any direction.

I know that several people are using the cardon joint to adapt the Jeep Grand Cherokee gear to the C3 steering column. It seems to be successful. However, I am quite sure that the solid joint allows for quite a bit more loading on the lower bearing and the lower end of the actual steering column jacket than was ever anticipated in the column design.

I wish that there was a flexible coupling with a gear flange that would couple to the GC gear "double D" input shaft. Than I would be able to suggest an alternative.

Jim

GSPORT96

Thanks for your input. Threw a curve ball at me. I had not thought of that. However it does seem to me that hard road racing (Daytona Speedway for example) it sure would be a lot of stress on a rag joint as well. We are taking some turns at some pretty high speeds. That was the reason I considered a universal joint.

What happened is after 7 years of racing the car, the power steering went out at Road Atlanta in April and I found I like the car better with no power steering better than with.

Thanks for all the help

vettfixr

This is what I used on my 74. I've had it on for a number of years now with no problems.

GSPORT96

Thanks for the input. I ordered one today. Looks good to me.

RunningMan373

Genius.

croaker

Hey Jim, what about that Billet joint pro's con's

Jim Shea

Here is a link to a paper with my thoughts on the flexible steering shaft coupling versus the single cardon universal joint.
http://jimshea.corvettefaq.com/wp-co...salJoints1.doc
Jim