My 68 has manual steering that is hard as “heck” to turn. I’ve recently replaced the ball joints, tie rod ends and idler arm, still hard to turn. Checked and set the camber, caster and toe, still hard to turn. To give you an example of the turning effort I can let go of the steering wheel while driving on a highway clover leaf and the car keeps on turning and does not straighten out. I autocross the car and have recently set the outer tie rods to the power steering position so I can have the quick steering ratio. It has help since now I’m able to recover from fish tailing where before I could not turn the steering wheel fast enough to recover, of course it made it a little bit hard to turn. It wasn’t until I checked the front bearings of my Jeep Cherokee that I realized that there is definitely something wrong with my vette’s steering effort. I jacked up one front wheel of the Jeep and pushed and pulled on the sides of the tire (9 and 3 o’clock) and the tire turned easily even with the other front tire on the ground. Meanwhile I was not able to do the same with the vette with both tires off the ground. At this point I’m thinking it is the gear box which I have adjusted, it helped reduce the slop in the steering but not the steering effort. I would like to have a more reasonable steering effort and a quicker steering ratio. All the threads I’ve read about the Jeep box seem to be in regards to power steering, is there a manual version of the Jeep box or can the Jeep box go either way? The Jeep box in my “Jeep” seems so much better than the gear box in the vette. I’ve had other manual steering cars and this one takes the cake.

 

What's your tire pressure?...and how big are they?

Thirdly, when you adjusted (reduced) the lash in the steering box, was the steering wheel straight? If not, you'd have some binding in the box.

 

My tires are 245/60-15 for all four and the tire pressure is 30 psi. The steering was hard before I adjusted it and I was very careful to center it before I adjusted it. At this point even if I was able to get a better steering effort I'd like a quicker steering ratio, autocross has alot of sharp and quick turns.

Thanks

 

You might want to check out the Flaming River manual rack setup.

 

If you go to a 'quicker' steering ratio, it will be even harder to turn. How does it handle once you get the car moving? If it is still hard to turn, you must have a mechanical problem with the steering box.

 

If you have adjusted the lash then your steering gear inside the box may not be "on center" when the wheels are straight ahead. If the gear is not centered then the wheel will not want to return to center when letting go of the steering wheel. Check Jim Shea's paper on steering. He is our Corvette Forum steering guru.

 

You should be able to move the wheels back and forth with great ease under these conditions. That, and the car not returning to center from a corner indicates that something serious is wrong.

The steering box is a very strong contender as other have pointed out.

 

Sounds like you have the gear lash too tight. You may have worn gears. A properly setup box will steer pretty good even with big tires.
Let me know if you have any questions. These boxes can be built much better then new.

 

I just dug out the directions I used to adjust the gear box, I'll give it another try paying extra attention to centering it first. If this doesn't fix it then it looks like swapping it out for a rebuilt box.

 

Simply put, you have a friction problem. With the new parts you've replaced, it can very easily be narrowed to the gear lash as Gary suggested. Make sure you set the gear lashes in the proper order and to the proper level. Something in there is seriously bound up.

 

First rule of troubleshooting: Simplify the complicated system.

I would recommend doing the following to find exactly where your problem is (although I would initially guess steering box as GTR1999 and others have)

1. Disconnect the tie rods from the uprights, can the tire now be turned easily, grabbing at 9 and 3 o'clock? This rules out balljoints.

2. Reconnect the tierods and disconnect the steering box from the centerlink (at the Pitman arm). Try grabbing and moving the tire again. If it is hard now you know you have a steering linkage problem. If it is still easy the problem is further upstream, either the steering box or the steering column bearings.

3. If it is stiff with only the column and box in the system, disconnect the box at the rag joint and see if the steering column feels tight with nothing connected to it. You may as well disconnect the box at this point because either it or the column are going to come out anyway!

The steering system not re-centering on a clover-leaf type highspeed turn is new to me and a bit frightening!

Good luck, keep us posted.


Edit: It would be best to do the above tests with a jack under the lower control arm to get everything nearer actual ride-height conditions. Just be careful not to unload the jack-stand which will happen pretty easily if you have a higher-than-stock spring rate.

 

you may have too much caster dialed in if you are useing it for road racing, if your arms arm starting to cramp up you may need less caster

 

I posted an new question about centering a 68's gear box in this thread:
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...post1564839430

If I'm able to correctly center the gear box I'll readjust the gear box and see if it frees up the binding. Hoping for good news.

 

After you solve the bind issue, IMHO +2* or more caster with manual steering should be considered excessive for anything other than high-speed road racing (where Dick Guldstrand recommends as much as +3*). Don't know about '68, but the '69 factory spec was +1 1/2*, while Chevy Power book recommends anywhere between +1/2 to +1 1/2*. The less, the easier to navigate parking lots, but the more darty it will get at speed. You may already know, but I didn't want to assume everyone else following along knew that.

I suspect you'll get back away from the quick steer setup when everything else is right.