ATTN: Problem came back, please jump to post #8


Hey everyone, on my dad's 71 Mach 1 there is a major steering problem. Everything would seem fine but then after making a turn the wheel is all of a sudden completely off center. Then when you make a turn again, or suddenly jerk the wheel the wheel will be center again. We were told before that the problem was the rubber bushing/coupling on the rag joint, but my friend and I just removed that today and the rag joint seems fine. We also did some more research online and it seems that a bad rag joint will just cause play in the steering, not a full on slip of steering to off center.

Is the rag joint the problem? If not what could this be? My other thought was that maybe it could be a bad steering box, I don't know what else it could be.

Thanks in advance

 

You say there is no play in the steering so i wouldnt think it would be the box or the rag joint. Possibly the steering wheel slipping on the rod because of a loose nut.

If you can get it to slip for you with a hard jerk while it is sitting have your buddy watch the pitman arm, rag joint and steering rod to see if there is any slipping in those parts. I would also pop the steering wheel center cover off to see if the wheel is slipping on the rod and needs the nut tightened.

 

After you turn does the car want to pull to one side, then when you turn the other way it either goes straight or wants to pull the other direction?

 

You got power steering? Be careful- the 71-73 mach 1 has progressive rate, non mach had regular steering. A rebuilt replacement could be anything.

 

Thanks all for the responses. Yes it does have power steering, thats weird that there are different PS boxes...

Well I think we figured it out, we thought the rag joint teeth was completely stripped so we went hunting around for a good used one since it isn't reproduced, and it turns out ours was fine and it is just the way it is supposed to look. Also, the rubber was fine so it seemed like a complete waste to undo the whole steering column and get the rag joint off. However, we got some advice that simply the clamp on the rag joint wasn't tight enough on the steering box spline, which made sense because I didn't remember having to use much effort at all to undo that clamp bolt. So when I reassembled it with my friend I made it as tight as could be and it seems to have solved our problem. My dad took it out and cornered it hard, u-turns, and all that and it didn't slip so as of now it fixed, but more driving will really test it out. It seems that whoever messed with the car before us, presumably to rebuild the steering box or something, didn't feel like tightening the rag joint down very much and it was slipping. I just hope this fixed it for good.

Except now the car is having trouble starting and would stall at idle, we think the timing is one of the issues but the distributor is frozen to the engine, whoever owned this car before us must have not tuned it up is years, or it sat for a while. The carb was also too lean which seemed to have taken care of the stall problem. But all this is another story.

 

Not weird- Saginaw made variable-ratio boxes for Corvettes, and mach1 was Ford's performance car, they were just trying to keep up. Naturally, a housewife with a power steering coupe would not like the quickness of the variable.

Start soaking the base of the dist with PB Blaster. It'll be a while.

 

she'll be on the road soon enough

 

So the problem came back today, anyone have any suggestions? Right now rtintwo's suggestions seem the most plausible.

To recap what happens, when making a trun, at random, the steering wheel slips to an off center position (like a 7 o'clock to 1 o'clock position) and the front end goes way out of alignment. This causes everything to perform horridly and causes the tires to howl in the front. But then, when able to make another turn, (or I fixed it by turning the wheel lock to lock at a stoplight) it will go back to normal and drive great. It's not as if just the steering wheel slips, the whole steering goes out of whack

What could this problem possibly be???

 

Something is screwed up in the linkage, tie rod ends, adjusters, etc. Fix this problem now, before it kills you.

 

2+2 is right, limit your driving until this is fixed, this problem sounds dangerous. The tire howling sounds like one of your wheels is going so far out of alinment that it is skidding instead of turning.

Try and get it to duplicate(safely), and take a look for whatever is sliding around on you.

In addition to what i suggested earlier, have your buddy wiggle the steering wheel and look at the tie-rods, pitman and idler arms for loosness. Put the front end on jack stands and see if your ball joints are loose. Now typically when any of these parts go bad then they are bad and dont give intermitent problems, but you need to make sure they are all good.

Take a good look at all of the points the the suspension and streeing connect to the frame. Many moons ago when i was still working in the dealership. I had a topaz come in that had tire howl and hard to turn to the right. Straight and to the left was fine. What i found was cracks in the frame rail and fender apron letting the right control arm to shift to the left when you would turn right. I would say this is the least likely thing for you to find but it is a 40 year old car and sounds somewhat similar to what you have.

If everything looks tight and in good shape let us know and we can try and figure something else out.