by Lauron » Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:56 am
After reversing the UCAs, I found the TB to be very squirely. This was extreme with the worn out(soft) front shocks I had. Side winds would be a really fight even with stock tires. The new shocks made this tolerable but the initial experience caused me to investigate. When I removed the old front shock, I cycled the front suspension and found significant toe in on compression and toe out on extension. This was after an alignment.
My observation as to why this is happening: the UCA flipped moves the ball joint slightly farther outside which caused positive camber in my case. The alignment correction, pushing the lower control arm out, needing a significant lengthening of the tie rod to get camber in spec.
I tried moving the steering rack lower, by removing a rack bolt. This did not help. When I loosened the inner tie rod end leaving one thread engaged in the rack, I got an improvement. This pushed the pivot point out about 1/4". So my conclusion is the inner tie rod pivot point needs to be moved out board to compensate for the LCA being farther out. Anyone else observed this?
A possible solution: an adjustable inner tied rod end. The inner tied rod end screws into the steering rack with a 18 mm x 1.5 mm pitch thread. I propose to use a matching 18 mm female clevis attached to the steering rack with an 18 mm stud. Stud length to be determined. The attached FRP example is a poor boy example but I propose to use a solid clevis The clevis, unless something is available, would be custom to match the heim. To strengthen the tie rod, I would bump the rod size to 16 mm expecting to match up a male heim with a male outer tie rod end through an adjustable straight tube with weld in left and right hand thread tube adapters. I was looking for something like the attached Moog end to match our spindle.
I followed the tie rod mod using the 2500HD outer noting the taper difference.
James Downing measured and calculated the taper sizes.
"Your numbers show the 2500 as a 6.2 degree taper, stock to be 8.6 degree taper, and the heim conversion to be 7.1 degrees."
So the problem is finding out the actual dimensions of a suitable short outer end. The Moog spec only gives you part info. Anybody else have a source for the tie rod end dimensions or has some one identified a short 16 mm outer that matches our spindle with or without the need to reamer the spindle?
Thanks,
Ron
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- FRP Inner tie rod end.jpg (74.22 KiB) Viewed 33272 times
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