Was: Question about draglink? Now: Steering is finally done.

[Trango]

The title says it all. I made a custom draglink last week, and when I installed it last night, the aft edge of the balljoint it brushes up against the shock. GRRR!!!!!

How close is this on a stock deuce? I'm wondering if I can "shim" the hemispheres in the joint to space the steering ball further aft in the joint, which should allow everything to clear.

 

[gringeltaube]

This is my custom draglink, st.wheel turned all the way to the right. If the ball joint sits on top of the steering arm as the original joint does, it shouldn't come even near the shock....
Could you post a pic to compare?

G.

 

[Trango]

Thanks for the reply, Gerhardt. I think what happened is that this new steering box (outside of the frame rails) positions the balljoint on the pitman so far outboard that the overall angle of the pitman arm changes, bringing the back of the pitman in contact with the shock.

Although there are no pics of the interference, there are some pics on my flickr account of the overall project.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28477403@N07/sets/72157606161579828/

In addition, I do have the front axle shims totally flipped on my deuce, which brings the steering arm closer to the shock on passenger-side steering lock.

There are two hemispheres in the stock balljoint "socket" ... I stuck a small shim under the front hemisphere, and in doing so moved the rest of the socket forward... it helped a bit.

For reference, did you have to retaper the steering arm on the axle, or is it the same taper as the stock tie rod ends (I assume those are the stock TRE's)? I have a pile of those tie rod ends - that may be a good fallback plan.

 

[Trango]

I picked up the last of the hydraulic parts last night to hook up the 3x10 ram. I should have everything finished within the next couple of days.

 

[gringeltaube]

... did you have to retaper the steering arm on the axle, or is it the same taper as the stock tie rod ends

I'm not familiar with tie rod taper #s and sizes (maybe someone can help here) but basically there are two sizes that matter: the bigger ones are 7/8" treaded and go on the steering link/knuckles. One of my steering boxes came with a pitman arm for that size too.
The next smaller size (3/4") fits tight into the deuce steering arm, although not as deep as the original ball type joint.
No mods were needed to use a common drag link with std. tie rods.

Here are some pics for comparison...

Hope meanwhile you solved the original problem!

G.

 

[Trango]

Gerhardt,

That's lucky - having to re-ream and retaper components is something of a bother. Thanks for the detailed reply (as always!).

Regarding my setup, I FINALLY finished this project tonight! I now have one-finger steering on the front end, all done via a 3" ram (a little overkill, I know) that bolts to the tie rod via a fabricated, heavy duty tube clamp. The other side of the cylinder is connected to the passenger side of the axle banjo via a 3/4" plate welded just below the line where the differential bolts on.

I'll post again when I get all of the pics uploaded to Flickr.

Regarding the clearance issue, I used a thick washer as a shim inside the workings of the balljoint, and effectively moved the joint a little inside its previous arc. It still slightly hits the top can of the shock, but it's pretty minor (and anyway, that can doesn't do anything but keep debris off the chromed rod of the shock).

I'm beat after a long day of working on cars (the Audi also had a boost leak issue that I had to TIG some brass hose barbs together to fix). If there are any questions, I'll do my best to address them once I'm making a little more sense.

Best,
Bob

 

[Trango]

All the pics are now in Flickr.

 

[CCATLETT1984]

Um, Flickr is great and all, but many of our members do like to look at the pics while browsing from work, and major sites like photobucket and flickr are blocked from many companies networks (I'm in IT and we do it at all of our locations). That's one of the reasons why we spent the money and got a lot more storage space when we upgraded the server this site runs on recently. Please post the pics here. that way, even if flickr goes down or something happens to the pics there, we have them stored here for people to see.

 

[Trango]

Not an unreasonable request. I'll see if I Can attend to this next week, when I have bandwidth again to upload.