Steering wandering and very twitchy, hard to keep straight?

Several possibilities come to mind (in order of cost):

Tyre pressure is important to these over tyred sedans,

Out of spec. front wheel toe-in, especially with worn tyres will affect tracking,

Correct front wheel alignment is is critical so if the earlier suggestions are moot this is the place to start.

Since you just acquired this car you ought to consider that it may have been in a wreck and is bent, throwing the original alignment out of spec. The alignment shop will tell you so, especially if their adjustments cannot return it to specification.

You don't cite any looseness in the steering but something may be loose!

And don't discount the rear suspension, it may be loose. The alignment shop should check it as well.

It's not going to fix itself so now is the time to take care of the problem.

try getting the tracking done

"layrway" wrote

Wayne, if you just bought the car, is this a more recent problem? or did you notice something amiss before buying?

cheers

I bought my 300 TDT in 1993 with 144,000 miles on it. The steering wandered all over the place, seemingly similar to what you describe. There was excessive play in the wheel, and the steering box could not be adjusted to remove the play.

I found a steering box at a wrecking yard for $75. There was a lot of cussing and struggle to change out the box, but I got it done and it fixed the problem. I now have 410,000 miles on the car, and the $75 steering box has not had to be even adjusted and still works great.

Paul Fretheim

Had this problem with my '90 420 SEL. It turned out to be a bad/loose tie rod end.

John