Loose steering - Possible Reasons Inquiry

[rickjowett]

Hello,

The steering on E2SAL813 is a bit loose, scary actually. What would be the high percentage things for me to look at in order to resolve? Safety is my emphasis.

Rick

[Keith Clements]

Depends what you mean by 'loose'.
Tyre pressure, tracking, camber, ball height and castor, wheel bearings, king pin play, and shims. Steering rod ball play, wear in rack and pinion or universal joint.
If rubber suspension then soft rubbers, if metal , then wear in worm or other metal components.
Wear can be detected with tyres off ground and then rocking wheel in different directions and then moving steering wheel from side to side and holding each component in turn from the UJ to the track rod.

[Chris Spencer]

Yet no one has mentioned the steering box whilst these are subject to wear I doubt that this is the issue - they do however come loose from the inner wing mounting that they bolt through and in some cases the upper mounting elongates to the point that the bolt breaks free from its mounting

[Keith Clements]

That is true on a Jav but a Jup is secured between rubber rings and a three bolt clamp at one end.
It is pretty simple to see where there is play if one person wiggles the steering wheel and the other looks to see where the play is occuring.
Play in the rack is at the straight ahead position. You can adjust to take up some of the play but only do it on an unworn part of rack, otherwise your steering will jam up. Same is true when reshiming ball joints, always check there is no seizing across whole of range of movement including on full bounce and full rebound (that is not so easy to do). Adjusting steering ball height also has a gotcha so make you have not adjusted to where the ball pops off its socket otherwise you will end up without steering.

[Srenner]

Agreed it could be any of the above and for sure easier to find with one person gently rocking the wheel while another looks at or feels each component.

In my experience the two most common are the u-joint and the inner ball sockets.

The sockets are fairly simple to adjust and can be shimmed stacking .005" or .010" shim stock or shim washers to remove end play.

The wear point on the steering knuckle is not a simple fix, but seeing the play is easy. Most will be in two small pins that flush to the outside of the yoke from the steering wheel side. They will appear as a small circle centered in the side of the yoke and should have no apparent movement or wobble. Just a tiny movement translates to a surprising amount of play at the steering wheel.

Here in the States, I do have a few tie rod ends and other NOS or low mileage steering components if you find something defective. The u-joint fix is another long topic.