Steering Play around center

Hi everyone,

after getting to drive a bit more, I find it increasingly annoying that my car has a "dead spot" around the center.

If you hold the wheel straight, it drives straight.

But if you want to change directions, you need to turn the wheel more than it should be necessary in my opinion, to make it start changing direction. After that "dead spot" everything is fine, no excessive play or resistances (it had that before changing the u-joints).

The car has a replacement rack from Hall, new u-joints, and some new bushings in the front. After all that it had an alignment.

Is that play around the center normal?

Or the better question: How much is normal?

Final one: if not, what could cause it?

Thank you, and as always, sorry for my bad english.

10/8/241:00 PM

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rockyMember

Georges…

When you say you changed the U joints, you mean the ones in the steering shaft area, right?

If I recall correctly, there are either two or three total, one (or two) in the pilot’s cockpit, and one joint where the steering shaft goes into the rack.

A quick test would be to sit in your car in the garage, and turn the steering wheel left and right to see how much play you have without the wheels even turning.

If you’re detecting a lot of play, then have someone watch each one of those U-joints individually to see which one of them (if any) is the problem.

If they are good, the next might be to put your car up on your 4-post lift, so that the front wheels won’t turn, and do the same test.

This time, watch the input shaft to the steering rack. If the movement occurs there, then the issue is in that part of the steering rack.

Just a slow process of elimination! Keep us posted!

Rocky

10/8/243:19 PM

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stevebuchananMember

Another source of that type of free play might be in steering column's collapsing mechanism. Here an article that describes the problem and how to fix it.

http://www.panteraplace.com/page177.htm

10/8/243:36 PM

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LeMans850iMember

@stevebuchanan posted:
Another source of that type of free play might be in steering column's collapsing mechanism. Here an article that describes the problem and how to fix it.
http://www.panteraplace.com/page177.htm

The double D shaft wallows out….

quite the possibility after everything else got changed…