Put on another Inch, steering slop?

You have a spring U bolt that is loose or a centering pin that has snapped by those symptoms.

Mike

Carl Saiyed wrote:

Haven't you in actually "lifted" your vehicle, thereby changing the effective length of the draglink, which is going to affect the orientation of "straight ahead" in relation to steering wheel position?

I all ready did a spring-over on it, lifting it 5.5". It's also got 1" of shackle lift, giving it 6.5". Now with the new springs, it's at about 7-8". I put a 4" drop pitman arm on to correct the steering. Usually with a bad alignment, isn't the steering off ALL the time? ie, when stopped or moving?

Carl

I don't really know. Maybe when you are at rest there is enough friction in the tires, and enough flex in the steering components to allow wheel movement without tire movement. Once you start to move, things "settle".

Are you saying that if you are driving along on a straight and level, your wheel is off center, but as soon as you stop it moves back to center? Doesn't make sense to me.

I'd take a look-see at the draglink. I know when I did my SOA I added a drop pitman to get it back to decent angle, and had to get another draglink that had more adjustment length to it. By the time I adjusted the factory one out to where my wheel was centered, there were only about 1/2" of threads holding the whole mess together.

When i stop, the wheel remains mostly as off center as it was when I was driving. However, when stopped, if I center the wheel the wheels remain straight.

Carl

I'd have to go with the draglink still. It's hard to give a definitive answer from the confines of my LazyBoy, but at the very least I'd say adjusting your draglink will bring the wheel back to center during actual driving. I'd still wager the at rest issue is a steering component friction/flex issue and wouldn't worry too much about it. Look it all over to make sure everything is within spec, adjust the link, and forget about it.

I disagree!

The last person I know to change springs had the exact symptoms. He didn't worry until he was lost, 25 miles from the nearest phone, in a swamp when that loose U-bolt let the axle move back far enough for his driveshaft to fall out. It also snapped the spring pack's centering pin while it was at it. That was Norm Mitchell from this group. He was lucky and heard us on the CB in the area so we tracked him down and helped.

Something is broken or loose to have those symptoms and it isn't a drag link....

A snapped frame can also cause those symptoms....

A steering box snapped loose from the frame can cause those symptoms....

A missing or dead bushing in a main leaf's anchor end can cause those symptoms....

Or a loose spring pack U-bolt.

A dead track bar on a coil sprung unit can also cause them.

Mike

Tom Green>

Maybe maybe not, but in any case that's why I recommended he make sure everything underneath was "up to specs". If I understood the original post, none of these symptoms were present until just after he swapped out springs, so I doubt the busted steering box or broken frame. At worst loose u-bolts someplace but I'd guess the odds of him forgetting to tighten ubolts or replace bad bushings are slim. Possible, but slim.

Well, I even helped Norm do his spring swap. There were 4 or 5 of us and we did torque everything correctly, but the 'used' springs reacted differently than new ones to book torque specs so the u-bolts came loose anyway.

It certainly isn't something that should be ignored.

His u-bolts can also be 'torqued out'. Once they get stretched once or twice, they can go soft and never hold a torque again. I think that is what happened to Norm's.

Technically, leaf spring U-bolts, like head bolts are only supposed to be used once to avoid this exact thing from happening.

Mike

Tom Green>

Hopefully when he finds his fix, he'll post here. I'll be curious to know the result.

symptoms....

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