Saturday, November 22, 2008

Bump Steer

Last weekend, when I was driving Lucille before the generator blew, I had her on the freeway and the dips in the road surface would cause her to steer to the right a bit. I got sidetracked with the alternator thing, but later I looked up the symptom and it seems when I changed the steering gear and pitman arm, I altered the angle of the tie rod ends because the drag link is now slightly lower. I had heard about keeping the drag link level, but failed to keep the tie rod ends level with the drag link. Result: Bump Steer (or bumpsteer). There are various kits available, none for Cadillacs, of course, that will help correct this with an adjustable height tie rod end. I did find a place in PA that may be willing to put a kit together for my car. I set them the specs and am waiting to hear back from them.

2 comments:

  1. Going through this today I realized I never posted any information about how I resolved this bump steer issue. I ended up buying a '59 idler arm and flipping it upside down to get the tie rod level. It worked pretty well as there is minimal effect now when I hit a bump on the freeway. Gonna have to see if I can dig up better material to cover this fix.

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