Steering turns issue

[buickfed]

mine is a 68 cali rail with p-s box and spindles. it takes forever to make turns. when we visit different tracks, I always ask for a pass to see if we can make the turns at the end. right turn is not bad. left turn takes about 25% more. at Lebanon valley, left turn only, we had to do 2 k-turns to come back. any ideas w/out cutting it up?

[dreracecar]

Pictures would help

[JrFuel Hayden]

Sounds like your pitman arm needs to be re-aligned.  Take the arm off the steering box shaft,  find the center of your steering wheel/ box by turning it all the way to the left, then all the way to the right, then turn steering wheel to the center of both.  Re-install pit arm, and then adjust draglink  so the front wheels turn equal left and right. Make sure the front wheels are not hitting any part of the racecar.
That should straiten you out.   

Good Luck

[slingshot383]

Another possible issue is that the arm that comes off the steering shaft is to long (the arm that is parallel to the body panel on the side of the car)  The length of that arm and the length of the arm on the spindle makes a difference on how it steers.

[hotrod316]

HOW LONG IS YOUR CAR?
OURS TAKES TWO FOOTBALL FEILDS AND THE PARKING LOT TO TURN RIGHT OR LEFT.
OUR WHEEL BASE IS 230"
YOU SHOULD WATCH US LOAD AND UNLOAD IT 
WE JUST PICK THE FRONT END UP AND IT TURNS LIKE A VW lol

[dreracecar]

The P&S box does not turn symetrical. The box it was designed after was offset mounted and they compensated the steering action with long and short ty-rods. The left side was slow because the ty-rod was short and quick acting while the right side was long(thus slow) so it had to be quicker.

[BK]

I had a similar problem with my 175" FED. Turned right pretty good but refused to turn left. I found three things that fixed it. First I found the slot in my P&S box was tight on one end. A little grinding and polishing fixed that. Second the long steering link from the pitman arm was too light. It was 3/4" .058 tube. Turning right it was in extension and worked fine but turning left it was in compression and would bow down and wheels wouldn't turn as far. I doubled up the tube with the next size up and it fixed that problem. It still turned a little stiff. So I changed the caster from 30deg to 18deg now it drives like a sports car.

[rooman]

All three of my P & S boxes  must be different then as when I center the arm inside the box, turning the sector shaft until it runs out of travel turns the input shaft the same amount in either direction--starting at 12 o'clock it ends up at 10 and 2 o'clock. If the pitman arm is mounted at 90 degrees to the steering column rather than at 90 degrees to the drag link, that will have an affect on the amount of right and left lock depending on the angle of the steering column relative to the drag link.. Not having the steering arm on the spindle at right angles to the drag link will have the same effect. I did not pull the worm gear out of the box to check the helix on the worm but even it that varied from end to end it would simply change the steering rate, not the total travel.

Roo

[buickfed]

it's 192" w/b. probably part of the problem is the caster. full turn flops the wheels right over. need another person to help straighten it out. will have to check the castor angle. it does needs the 2 footballs fields to turn around.   other than that, its a fun ride.
will get my son to post some pictures.

[BK]

If someone needs to stand the wheels up. You can bet it has all of 30deg of caster. That would be the place to start. At 150 mph I didn't feel 18deg of caster was a problem. Any faster you will need input from someone else.

[hotrod316]

our car has 20* and still layes the wheels over but it backups nice  did have 40* (can you say broken wrist)

[buickfed]

our car has 20* and still layes the wheels over but it backups nice  did have 40* (can you say broken wrist)

same symptoms but w/o the broken wrist. don't know if I can change the camber to help anything.

[32bantam]

FYI
It is the CASTER you will be changing.
Camber it the amount the wheels tip in or out at he top.
Caster is the amount the king pin is angled to the rear at the top, or in the case of ball joints, how much the top ball joint is behind the lower.
Steve Walczak

[janjon]

 I used to watch the big show cars back up after burnouts and see some pretty alarming-looking front-wheel wobble. At the time I wondered why no one seemed to get all upset about it, just went on about their business and made the pass without the fronts falling off. Upon getting my FED bout 10 years back, and having the wobble thing happen to me I understood what was going on, that the caster that made it stable going forward did the opposite in reverse, especially if you let speed build and get too far from straight at the same time. "Oh-Sh*t" moment but no broken wrists or otherwise. So just keep speed moderate and no wild steering and all is well. It's not like I'm backing up from half-track, anyway.
 Just for grins, (not feeling the need for sh*ts), me and the kitten just went and measured the caster on my car, it reads 25' on one side, 28' on the other.
 Evidently, old-school thought was that more was gooder, seems modern thought might be that less is more, or at least that less is enough.
 Any expert opinions on what is optimum? And any relation to wheelbase or anything else?

[buickfed]

castor, right. measured it tonight, 40*. hopefully if I can make it less w/o cutting anything up. just need a little warmer weather to start the furnace up. I have an old green house heater in my garage and it likes to burn fuel.