1963 With Hard Steering

[Richard P.]

PROBLEM: Hard steering and steering wheel does not return to center after cornering.

BACKGROUND: My 81K mile '63 with power steering drove ok even with some play in the steering. I had a local mechanic install new idler arm, control valve, power cylinder, steering box and p.s. hoses which I provided. I did not replace the p.s. pump. The tie rod ends were relocated to the correct hole on the steering arm for p.s. cars. A four wheel chassis alignment was done and the tech recommended new lower ball joints. This has not yet been done. The tires are 215/70R15. The control valve seems balanced, there is no wheel shimmy.

FINE WHINE: My efforts to date have made the steering worse not better. My search of the archives did not produce a thread similar to my problem. Where did I go wrong and how do I save this project?

Thanks for your time, any and all suggestions are appreciated.

[Loren L.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Are the tie rod ends in the correct holes? Was the steering wheel EVER centered?

[Richard P.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

I had the mechanic move the tie rods from the rear holes to the front holes. Don't know how they ever got in the rear holes. I believe the mechanic who did the installation and the align. tech did center the steering wheel as they performed their work. The wheel may be a few degrees off center, but no worse than when I started this project.
Thanks for you reply.

[Mike T.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Hi Rich - Was this new steering box checked for adjustments before being installed? If everything else checks out okay, possibly the lash adjustment on that new box might be too tight? It's too bad they didn't verify it on the bench before installing but it still can be done, just takes a little disassembly first.

[Richard P.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Hello Mike, congrats on getting to Az. I assumed (yes I know) that the new box would be ready to go directly from the supplier. I doubt that the installer reverified the adj.. The new power cylinder did fail upon its first pressurization and had to be replaced by the parts house.

[Mike T.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Hey Rich - Thanks, we finally made the move to Prescott in mid January. The new house and...wait for it...'TWO' Garages, should be ready in about a month. Okay, so back to Hard Steering. I think it's really a long shot that the new steering box could be that poorly adjusted but if nothing else pops up on the radar, maybe it's worth a look. Your comment about the new slave cylinder jogged my memory because when I got tired of the leaks from my old slave cylinder on my 65 Coupe, I bought a new one. I found a decent price on a new unit but when it showed up and I tried moving the piston rod, it didn't budge. Gave it a few light raps with a soft mallet and still nothing. You can imagine me rolling my eyes about then. I did finally get it to move just a little bit, we're talking less than a 1/4-1/2 inch or so and saw some thick brown syrupy looking goop coming out. Figured this was some sort of Chinese preservative. Added a few drops of power steering fluid, tapped the end of the rod, got it to move a little and repeated this scenario over and over and finally got it to move the full distance. While that was good, I also realized the rod (and internal seal) was still stiff enough that it needed some oomph to make it move. I hoped that I wouldn't find this slave cylinder so stiff that my steering wheel wouldn't return to center when I tried to take a corner. Knock on wood, it all turned out okay but I did have my fingers crossed. Sorry for the long story but maybe ask the mechanic if he noticed the new slave cylinder acting a bit too stiff when he installed it.

[Richard P.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Mike: I'm going to make up a to do list from commenters and try to work through them in some logical pattern. After many denials from my part supplier it turned out that my failed new cyl came from China and was part of a bad batch all sold about the same time. They replaced it with a cyl. made in the U.S. which seems to work but could have some stiffness that I didn't notice when I installed it. Thanks for the tip.
Richard

[Gary R.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Can you post of picture of the cover of the box. I can say I have had many, way too many, "rebuilt" boxes sent to me only to find extremely poor practices and parts used. One particular place was installing the worm nut upside down in order to try and save worn out gears. I had one of these boxes in and couldn't believe my eyes. I fixed it but had to completely go through the box.Caster will make a difference with return but if you don't see any threads showing above the jam nut in the cover your box needs new gears.

[Richard P.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Thanks for the reply Gary. I bought the box new from a well know Corvette parts house in Michigan. Posting photos is beyond me at this point however I did check the top of the box and there is one quarter of an inch of thread above the jam nut you mentioned. The box was also correctly lubed from what I could tell. Thanks for the caster setting tip.

[Gary R.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Richard I would have your shop check the alignment again to be sure. If you get to the point of removing the box I can go over a couple of checks with you. Having a dial torque wrench with a 0-30 in/lb scale will be a very big help.Make sure the lines to the valve are correct. If the steering felt easier to one side vs the other that usually is an out of balance condition within the valve. That should be able to be adjusted on the car.

[Richard P.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

Gary, thanks again. I'll add these tips to my to do list. I now regret changing so many components in one operation, makes it hard to isolate a cause. However, one thing I didn't change was the p.s. pump. In your experience, are these steering problems perhaps caused by a weak pump?

[Gary R.]

Re: 1963 With Hard Steering

The pump could be a problem, but you said the car was ok before primarily had loose steering, correct? The logical thing would be to back track and look at what you did. I am assuming the belt and PS fluid have been checked and the system bled.