Off Centre Steering
Submitted: Thursday, Jun 17, 2004 at 22:12
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waveslave
Hiya all,
On a recent trip, my lovely missus drove into a deep washaway at aprox 60k an hour! We won't go there!
Since then, my beloved 78series Troopy has its a steering wheel off centre by about 5 degrees or so. It's also pulling mildly to the left. I took it in and got all the wheels aligned, but it's still pulling and off centre. The dude at the
shop said not to worry, that I may have bent something, but it was on big deal.The tyres only have about 5,000k's left and he said to worry about it then.
He said the only way to fix the steering wheel was to physically take it off and realign it.
Should I truck on happily, or should I find the problem now? Thought I'd get the wise words of the world. Thanks in advance.
Reply By: Topcat (WA) - Thursday, Jun 17, 2004 at 22:33
Thursday, Jun 17, 2004 at 22:33
Hi Waveslave, what has most likely happened to cause your steering wheel to be off centre is that you have a bent relay rod. This is the rod that connects the steering box to the tie rod assembly. It should have been observed & brought to your notice when you had the wheel alignment checked. This should not have caused the the steering to continue to pull off centre after the wheel alignment was corrected. Most likely you have front
suspension or axle housing damage. I would recommend that you go to a repubtable 4wd
suspension dealer & have it thoroughly checked out before any further damage occurs. Cheers.
AnswerID:
63674
Reply By: ChrisB - Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 10:56
Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 10:56
Had a similiar problem with my 100 series, but was only traveling at about 20kms/h when I hit an
embankment. Steering wheel pointing to about 1 o'clock.
Took it to get wheels aligned immediately and they said steering arm was ever so slightly bent but would not cause a problem.
Next service it was corrected by Toyota at the steering box and not the steering wheel because of the air bag and a finer adjustment could be made at the steering box end as even rotating the steering wheel one spline could have been to large an adjustment.
AnswerID:
63729
Reply By: Member - Jeff M (WA) - Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 11:19
Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 11:19
From some experience on a number of vehicles I find that it's just too hard for most trye
places to bother to do the job properly as they are not charging enough money to spend even 30 mintues to find a problem.
There used to be a very good place I found that always made my truck point straight, howver he went out of business (hmmm, perhaps proves the above point) LOL
As mentioned in an above post, take it to a
suspension place and offer to pay them an hours labour or so to find and solve the problem once and for sure. If it ain't driving straight, somthing is wrong and me being a perfectionist could not handle it, it would give me the shts everytime I drove it.
AnswerID:
63733
Reply By: Member - DOZER- Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 12:42
Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 12:42
hi
Did this aligner give you a printout of the geometry b4 and after? Chances are you have bent the diff housing and a camber pin will need to be incerted.
places like truck align or any front end specialist can do this.
Andrew
AnswerID:
63756
Reply By: Davoe - Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 14:14
Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 14:14
could be any thing from something stuffed to a bad wheel alighnment. you dont say where you took it but chances are it was a get em in get em out specialist which is fine unless there is something wrong. I had a car with a pulsating brake pedal and took it to 2 of these type of merchants who told me there was nothing wrong - took it to a brake specialist who told me it had uneven thickness discs and fixed it messege here is take it to a front end alighnment specialist not bob jane
AnswerID:
63768
Reply By: noel h - Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 20:10
Friday, Jun 18, 2004 at 20:10
go to a place that only does front ends.
the local tyre
shop has to pay for the equipment and staff turnover
is the big problem thus no-one cares and the excuses come out as
to what you have done and you know darn
well you have not.
your local truck alignment place is where to go.
AnswerID:
63804