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I hope someone could offer some advice.
The car is a 454, 71 convertible.
Would I be able to safely collapse the steering collumn enough to fit a double U-joint instead of the Rag joint. About 4 inches from box to shaft.
The reason for the U-joint is because the car is RHD in Australia & it looks like the collumn is not directly inline with the steering box & seems to put sideways pressure on the rag joint.
Would this style of U-joint work?
To use a double Cardan joints of the stile shown . You need to make sure the two shafts are paralell to function correctly .
Is it possible to loosen the bottom of the steering column and line up the two shafts to use a single uni joint .
as for the safety of collapsing the shaft . 4’’ Doesn’t leave much room if there is a accident .
Have you noticed just how much the frame distorts when you steer the car while parking that’s a good indicator of why there is a rag joint and not a uni.
My suggestion, not cheap or easy, and not seeing the car, would be to remove the column and dis assemble. Have the shaft shortened and resplined. Use a single joint on the column shaft and one on the steering box with a shaft between the two joints as long as possible to lessen the working angles of the joints. In other words figure out where to shorten the column going towards the firewall so the new intermediate shaft will clear the engine and/or exhaust manifolds. You may have to weld some sort of bearing support to the frame rail to support the new shaft. If you have headers, you may be able to- or have to- run the shaft between some of the primary tubes. Seems like a lot to think about, but you are talking about the steering system. Like brakes, not a good area to go cheap.
Steering Column Help
