Kit Car steering wheels not straight??

[Dickster]

Been looking at Westies and Tigers recently as part of a plan, but am troubled by something.

This may make me sound really fick but why are most of the steering wheels on these cars never straight, as in horizontal? Some are and some aren't and I don't know if I could drive something like that as it'd do my head in!

[Jerkins]

Probably all they need is a bit of track rod adjustment - wind one in, and the other out.

Get the front wheel tracking done, and ask them to set the wheel straight while they're at it... simples!

Edited by Jerkins on Thursday 24th March 12:25

[andygtt]

its only because they cant be bothered to do the tracking setup correctly and dont care that the wheel isnt straight... like you I hate it.

doesnt make the car handle any differently though

[Steve_D]

Easily fixed.
First wind the steering lock to lock and carefully count the turns.
Wind it back to exactly half the steering wheel rotations.

If the wheel is straight or close to then get the tracking done with the request for the wheel to be straight.

If it is way out then this needs to be corrected either by moving the wheel on its splines or one of the other splined joints between wheel and rack. Once it is close then again get it tracked.

Steve

[rhinochopig]

Perhaps he's referring to the steering column angle?

[gtmdriver]

Some Mini's had a handy drilling in the inner rack and outer tube so that you could lock it in the central position with a 1/8" drill through the two holes.

[dave de roxby]

On some cars it is to be able to see the instruments better! Agree, I could't live with it.

[Yuxi]

I hate a steering wheel even a few degrees out on my "normal" cars, the wheel on my Tiger is miles out and I dont notice/care, I find when driving it I am looking where I am going, not at the wheel, it could also be that to look at the speedo (or any of the other gauges) I dont have to look through the wheel so never notice it is not central.

[robcollingridge]

It's an easy fix on most kitcars. If you have an Escort rack you can just disconnect the column at the rack end and align it. You need to do it at the rack end as that's where you have the finest control on the angle due to the large number of splines on the rack output shaft.

The other end of the column is a hex mount, so you have to move the wheel in 60 degree steps.

Rob

[Comadis]

i´ve bught myselves around 5kitcars in UK, adding the ones friends bought we are at around 20cars...and on ALL the steering was NOT straight...also on ALL cars we didnt found anything about wheel alignemnt in the car´s history (but even an invoice for a wheel nut was kept in the records)...and all cars had been set-up completely wrong. interesting, isnt it?

[thescamper]

Comadis said:

..and all cars had been set-up completely wrong. interesting, isnt it?

What do you mean by that?

[Comadis]

most cars had too much camber (2-3 degress negtive) and have been set mostly with lots of toe-in...i mean lots!!!! or the wheels had been setup that one wheel had visibly lots of toe-in/toe out the other much less. 90% of these cars had been used in UK on the road, never been tracked.

after a proper wheel alignment the cars transformed in something completely differnt.