legacycentral bbs

I just finished changing the rack on my 92 as the old one had a clunk in it. I left the tie rods where they were, and ended up having the steering wheel cocked to the right. As I was going for an alignment anyways, I just left it.

Anyhoo, when I went for the alignment, I asked them to basically even out the tie rods, then adjust as necessary to correct toe. I told them I'd centre the steering wheel myself. Well, that didn't happen... What I've got now is 1 tie rod almost all the way on (almost no threads showing), while the other side is out quite a ways. And my steering wheel is nice and straight.

So, what I'm wondering, aside from the loss of steering travel to one side, as the rack is basically off centre when the wheels are straight, anything else I should wonder about? Is the difference even going to be noticeable? Granted, they didn't give me what I wanted, which is enough to go back, but is it really worth my time?

Thanks.

A shop once aligned my car with the steering wheel cocked to the side. It tracked straight; but, it was really twitchy when turning for some reason, much more so in one direction than in the other. It felt really dangerous at high speeds; I made them pay for me to have the dealer re-align the car.

Your car probably is in the same condition, except that the joint between the steering column and the rack is off by a tooth or something, so the wheel is straight. You might still experience this twitchy asymmetrical behavior.

Then again, I don't know anything about the steering system, so maybe I'm wrong.

Have you taken the car for a test drive?

Yup, drove it 62 miles home. It feels much better than it did before the rack replacement / alignment. It looks like what happened is they just went ahead and did the normal person's alignment, making sure the steering wheel ended up straight. Unfortunately, since my wheel was already off to one side, they had to shorten that side's tie rod even more.

I think I'm more pissed that I asked for something, and they made no effort to accomplish it. I don't even know if it was communicated to the guy doing the alignment.

I guess my big concern is how much tire rotation am I loosing, ie for parking lots, when I need almost full lock. Is there much of a difference when moving a tie rod from close to the rack to close to the wheel?

The rack is probably off by a tooth. If it is only cocked about 10 degrees, it could just be it wasnt mounted at quite the same place on the car. If it works and you still have enough threads, i would just run with it.

It does seem to work so far. I guess I'll let whoever gets to do the next alignment deal with it then.

Thanks guys.