JRC

I am new to this site and need your help. Long story short i had a bad blow out that put my 89 LX 5.0 into the wall. After getting the body fixed and letting the car sit for a few years I am almost ready to get it back on the road.
I definitely need an alignment, my question is when my tires are straight my steering wheel is turned about 90 degrees out of whack. Any suggestions on what i need to do to fix this?
I was told to remove the steering wheel and put it back on when centered, was told my strut was damaged, and was told i could not recenter the rack in these cars.
Any help will be most appreciated.

Thanks for your time

mattdel

they'll do it in the alignment shop. part of the toe adjustment.

JRC

Thanks, I am impressed on how fast someone replied.
Thanks for taking the time to do so.

mjr46

I sure hope your not gonna go off his recommendation, you have something bent still!!!!! you need to find out what it is or all you'll succed in doing is putting a bandaid on the issue and most likely will still have steering issues and tire wear issues, all tie rods = inner and outer need to be inspected, spindle needs to be inspected as well as strut and control arms assemblies

mattdel

just assumed that he already knew that.

JRC

Thanks MJR. I replaced my outer tie rod that was bent on the drivers side. When viewing from underneath I cannot see anything abviously bent. When i turn the steering wheel lock to lock i don't hear anything or feel anything. I am new to this please understand. Without looking at my car my friend told me it could be a bent strut or a damaged rack but i would hear noise when i am turning. This may be another stupid question but the items you mentioned that could be damaged would they be obvioulsy bent or do they need to be removed off the car?

mattdel

you'd need to get the car in the air to see obvious bending,so you could compare each side. one quick little test you could do would be to measure the distance between the tire and the fender, on both sides of the tire, then do the other side. make sure they're the same.

any competent alignment tech will be able to see right away if something is wrong. from my experiences, steering racks aren't that durable. they cant bend, they'll just snap.

JRC

Thanks again for that information. I am basically trying to see if i can figure out what the issue is or can be so i can replace it myself or know if the shop is trying to rip me off. They may tell me a - z needs to be replaced when all they did was unbolt the rod from the rack and rebolt with the steering wheel straight (not sure if that is even possible but i am sure you know what i mean). It definitely will be heading to the allignment shop within a couple of weeks, once i have the $$$. I will post the results if interested.

Thanks again