Shakes, Shimies and steering

22nd August 2007

Having been driving the buggy around for a few weeks in the sunshine , when time permitted. I had noticed that the front wheels where wobbling at around 40mph. I thought this must be due to wheel balancing and booked in to have my front wheels balanced £10.00 later and whilst my front wheels where being put back on, the mechanic noticed my front wheels where moving alot and suggested either the problem was due to track rods being loose, or worn or the steering box was on the way out.

I took the buggy home and that evening had a look at the track rods. They where not in very good heart and seemed to be loose, so I decided to replace them all with new ones.

The track rod ends where held on with split pins and castle nuts. The new rod ends came with nyloc nuts and seemed like they would be easier to install. The first three ball joints the two outers and the driver side inner came out reasonably easily. The final one the inner passenger side gave considerable trouble. I tried initially to use a F wrench and a section of the trolley jack handle to wrench out the ball joint. Neither this nor heat or a combination of hitting or soaking the track rod end in WD40 helped.

I word to the wise.

I decided that a lunch break was called for and went shopping to see if I could find a ball joint splitter. Halfords provided the solution and I was soon back at it attacking the stubborn ball joint. Even with the Ball joint splitter it took an hour to get the track rod end out of the steering box arm.

Once I had the track rods out I measured them to ensure that when I replaced the new ends that the track rods remained the same length, hopefully ensuring that the tracking was OK.

Whilst I had the track rods out .I resprayed the track rods and cleaned them up. This was principally as I new the buggy would need to be tracked and if the rods where greased up and free this would make the job simpler.

I reassembled the track rods and placed them back into the car. I was unable to check the tracking by eye as it had become dark. I left this job until another day.