Steering

(click on any image to enlarge)

I already had the front wishbones made so I cracked on and started the stub axles. Nothing very exciting here apart from making sure the stubs where welded to the tubes at a 95 degree angle, and also to make sure they where identical. Strength of weld is very important here -you can see from the colour of the tubes in the photo, the amount of heat involved, during welding.
The next job was to drag myself off to the car breakers yard to source a steering rack and column. The plans say use a Ford Escort MII rack. These are getting pretty rare these days so I went for one off of a MIII Escort. I don't think it matters too much as long as it has a steel tube which the rack runs in. Anyhow I spent about an hour undoing all the bolts to find the column was seized solid to the rack input pinion. Dohh!! So I had to do the job all over again on another car, this time picking one that had an oil leak!! All the leaking oil ensured that the column wasn't seized to the pinion this time. 2 hours later I had this back at the lock up.
This rack is far too wide to fit in the buggy frame. The plans show me how to shorten it. First you have to cut through the outer tube. The photo opersite shows where I cut the outer tube.
Then I had to measure and cut the rack just before the ball joint. This allowed me to slide off the outside tube. I used the measurements in the plans and marked the rack where it needed to be cut.You would think that because the rack has teeth machined into it that it would be toughened in some way. Not so. I cut through using an hacksaw.!
I had to make a bush to go between the rack and casing. This stops the inner rack "floating" inside the casing. I then bevelled both pieces and welded the ball joint back on to the inner rack. After the weld was re-dressed, I added some gear oil and re- fitted the boots. I then "loose fitted" it into the frame to check that all was OK.
I made some mounts for the rack I then set about fitting the column to the frame.I firstly attached it to the pinion of the rack, positioned the steering wheel at a comfortable height, then welded some support bars to relevant places of the frame.
All that was left to do was to fit the wheels and cut the track arms. I extended the track arms with some tubes to the correct length. Welded everything up. Job done!!!

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