Is she getting too loose to enjoy ??

[Mr Cerbera]

Just finished replacing the UJs and re-routing the steering wheel wires away from the Boss interface
BUT
I still have this amount of movement.
Am I remembering life as too perfect or is this reasonable ??

Thanks

[spitfire4v8]

By far the most common issue for this is not enough clamp load on the bottom uj onto the rack .. you need to REALLY dog that one up tight or you will have the play you've got ..

[Luckyone]

If you had the whole steering wheel & indicator top assembly (binnacle?) off doing work you probably dislodged the upper of the two plastic sleeves that go between the steering column shaft parts to stop metal on metal contact. There is the upper half the steering wheel bolts to & the lower half that goes out though the bearing by the pedals, they slide over each other to adjust the reach on the steering wheel. That makes it nice & easy to slide the whole upper assembly right off as I did when rebuilding the car. I didn’t realise there were two plastic sleeves & pushed the upper on too far up the first time I put it back so it wasn’t locating properly.

I spent ages trying to work out why I too much play in my steering wheel when there had been non before I rebuilt the car!

I just needed to take the top assembly off, fish the top sleeve back out, put it back in the right place & it has been fine even since.

[Mr Cerbera]

Cheers Lads,

Off on Summer Hols at crack of Sparrow-Fart tomoz so will give it all "a good coat of looking at" upon our return.

Thanks for the suggestions

[pmessling]

Last port of call would be the rack itself. The pre-load can be adjusted to remove some of the play should it not be the ujs or the plastic collar.

Wear on the pinion was my racks issue after only 25k, it looked like water had gotten in to mine and what little grease was in there wasn't doing much and turned the pinion teeth into knife edges instead of nice blunt teeth

[Byker28i]

Thats what I had - check the plastic triangular sleeve on the steering column as part of the column in/out adjustment. Make sure it's fully pushed up and engaging with all the upper outer, or if worn like my last one, then I shimmed mine with some sticky aluminium foil until I replaced it.

I managed to pick up a brand new column piece from a ford sierra and eventually get it off the column to replace mine. It was right, just needed to go all the way up.

See: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Edit: P.S. easy to see if this is the source of movement. Drop the panel underneath the steering column and watch as you wiggle the steering wheel. If it all moves together then its not the plastic slide, but it's an easy place to look first. Next would be the UJ, then finally you can adjust the rack to take out play in it.

Edited by Byker28i on Sunday 13th September 13:33