Weird steering shake

On or around Fri, 25 Mar 2005 19:28:09 GMT, "Jason Hall" enlightened us thusly:

drag link ball joints loose (either end), play in steering box (adjust) or worn UJs in the steering column. All can give the symptoms you describe.

Have an assistant rock the steering wheel from side to side gently (less than 1/4 turn, just enough so that the wheels twitch slightly) and examine all points for movement that shouldn't be there. Slight ball joint play can be felt better than it can be seen.

Most likely lack of pre-load on the swivels - they will need reshimming. Also, did you prime the damper before you fitted it?

Thats a nice job!

-- Subaru WRX (The Bitch)

Series 3 Landrover 88" (Albert)

"Christ's fat c*ck"

Wouldn't know....

I do know that it transformed my Discovery from virtually undriveable on rough roads to being very composed, and much more stable, even at highly illegal speeds.

On a Discovery with enough miles to need swivel work, it's also likely that the shocks and steering damper are knackered, not to mention the state of the wheel bearings and wheel alignment. It depends very much on the service history of the vehicle.

It's only when you get it put right that you realise just how bad it was...

Yep it's a whole subject of its own - lost track of how many Range Rovers and Discovery's have been inverted due to the runaway build up of front end instability --- quite few fatalites as well - but Landrover deny it................. I lost a RR on the A12 in Essex, another RR in Oxfordshire.......Disco started to show signs ..........

Any evidence of any of this at all, of any kind? Seems to me that rather a lot of them don't throw themselves into hedges or turn over.

Ooooh conspiracy!!

I'd suggest you buy a different car, one of those blue plastic trikes that you see in disabled bays might be more suited to you.

To lose one Range Rover is unfortunate, to lose two seems like carelessness...

On or around Mon, 28 Mar 2005 13:27:23 +0000 (UTC), "Larry Shaw" enlightened us thusly:

If you drive something which ain't roadworthy, they you deserve to end up upside down in the hedge. To get the sort of instability you're describing would, IMHO, require major wear in several components or systems at once. I've driven various LRs with more or less worn steering - worn joints in the drag link makes it a bit vague in a straight line, shot steering damper can give a high (about 2-3 Hz) frequency shimmy on hitting bumps, worn joints in the track rod can make it wandery too, or can make for inconsistent steering

- however, none of these singly unless very worn showed any signs of making it go fatally unstable at legal speeds. In the case of the 110 damper, it was totally shot - didn't make that much odds, asides from the shimmy as described, but that died out quite quickly and didn't continue once you'd got off the bumps. I suggest a bit of maintenance... I noticed a slight iffyness in one of the discos the other day, and sure enough, drag link balljoint has about a mm or