Steering Relay Arm

[Chris]

Thanks Frank, I rang them and they only had left handed string in stock. I left it needless to say. I'm not completely stupid when it comes to these things.

 

[clivehorridge]

Thanks Frank, I rang them and they only had left handed string in stock. I left it needless to say. I'm not completely stupid when it comes to these things.

Left handed string?

that's where I'm going wrong.

Can you order me some please Chris?

 

[Chris]

If you think I'm going to strand here listening to you twine about this whilst you try to rope me in then your hankering is going to go unanswered Clive. It won't end well you know and I can see it unravelling already so if you think you're going to have a ball; frayed knot. You must be twisted or loopy maybe to try and string me along. I knew a Lasso was the same some while back; she played me out and wound me up for a while until I cut the ties with her. Eye am going to wrap it up there before you give me anymore (g)reef.


How much do you want by the way?

 

[frank rabbets]

"Steering Relay Arm". Does that ring any bells Chris? Talk about a THREAD hijack.

Don't use green string as recommended by the Green Party. I changed from black to green and first thought it was a very good idea. No more string pollution...nothing. Then my 80 stopped on the Motorway. Bloody exhaust full of it.

 

[clivehorridge]

If you think I'm going to strand here listening to you twine about this whilst you try to rope me in then your hankering is going to go unanswered Clive. It won't end well you know and I can see it unravelling already so if you think you're going to have a ball; frayed knot. You must be twisted or loopy maybe to try and string me along. I knew a Lasso was the same some while back; she played me out and wound me up for a while until I cut the ties with her. Eye am going to wrap it up there before you give me anymore (g)reef.

How much do you want by the way?

Enough already, nice one Chris!

I see no edits, so there's no trace of a hitch... nothing warped spooling your line of approach...

 

[Oldboysixfive65]

I recently replaced steering rod ball joints and Damper Shock I used ball joint remover and press to push apart damper from steering rod. After reinstalling I found steering wheel was off centre. I took cruiser to the shop to have wheel alignment re aligned. Tyres are very expensive so alignment is very important. I have used string line and had great sucess. The laser wheel alignment system at shop is the best.
I have just replaced all ball joints, swing box bearings and seals. Sway bar bushes. I did replace lower rear control arm bushes. They were very hard to replace. In the end I bought a 12 tonne press.
Heading into Tanami Desert NT Australia this year so I wanted the vehicle running at its best. Just replaced distributor cap and spark plug leads. My 1990 FJ80R cruiser is running very well now.

 

[ByronJ]

I also set my tracking manually.

Know this is a bit controversial but, living in Wales, I don't have enough level ground around my house to use the string method so I use a stick . Colour and provenance of stick do not matter but a rigid one is best.

Once done I pop along to my local tyre place where they will check your tracking for free and only charge if they have to adjust it. It is in their interest to check thoroughly and so far my score is 3 checks and all between 1.0 - 1.5mm toe in.

If you fancy having a go at setting your tracking yourself this approach works well.

If you get it wrong the experts set it correctly with their fancy gear and you pay .

If you get it right you save a bunch of 'Fivers', the satisfaction of doing it yourself and the ring of confidence of an 'expert' second opinion .

 

[Scoop]

I also set my tracking manually.

Know this is a bit controversial but, living in Wales, I don't have enough level ground around my house to use the string method so I use a stick . Colour and provenance of stick do not matter but a rigid one is best.

Once done I pop along to my local tyre place where they will check your tracking for free and only charge if they have to adjust it. It is in their interest to check thoroughly and so far my score is 3 checks and all between 1.0 - 1.5mm toe in.

If you fancy having a go at setting your tracking yourself this approach works well.

If you get it wrong the experts set it correctly with their fancy gear and you pay .

If you get it right you save a bunch of 'Fivers', the satisfaction of doing it yourself and the ring of confidence of an 'expert' second opinion .

I have finally got my head around this set up. I had to start from scratch because I was replacing track rod and steering rod ball joints simultaneously. Despite "counting threads" on the old joints and replicating with the new joints, everything was wrong. It is essential to set the steering whilst the track rod is disconnected ( from one end) and then reconnect it to set the tracking. I originally assumed the Pitman arm would move with the adjustment on the steering rod but this is not the case. The nearside wheel moves and if its still connected to the offside wheel via the trackrod, adjustment of the steering rod impacts tracking too.

 

[frank rabbets]

You can disconnect the steering arm and turn the steering all you like and the tracking will not alter lol. If you disconnect it on a straight road, lengthen it, put it back on and drive off the wheel will be off centre but the car and tracking will behave the same. Tracking instructions in WSM confirm this.

 

[Scoop]

You can disconnect the steering arm and turn the steering all you like and the tracking will not alter lol. If you disconnect it on a straight road, lengthen it, put it back on and drive off the wheel will be off centre but the car and tracking will behave the same. Tracking instructions in WSM confirm this.

Maybe my problem is that I had the front wheels off the ground on axle stands and therefore adjusting the steering arm was turning the road wheels rather than the steering wheel?

 

[clivehorridge]

Maybe my problem is that I had the front wheels off the ground on axle stands and therefore adjusting the steering arm was turning the road wheels rather than the steering wheel?

On the assumption that I'm right (and I'm always ready to accept that I may not be) let's start again on this discussion. Also, make allowances for me using wrong terms or descriptions, but IMO this subject is very simple indeed.

So, with the steering arm (from Pitman arm to one of the wheels) disconnected, the track control arm (the arm going from one wheel to another parallel with the axle) sets the relationship between one wheel and the other. By lengthening or shortening the arm (by adjusting the ball joint threads in the ends of the arm) you will be going from toe-in, through parallel, to toe-out. This is known as the tracking alignment. It is totally independent from any other influence.

Then, with the tracking alignment correct, and the wheels pointing straight ahead (this is difficult to assess, they may always be slightly to one side or the other and the reason why all this process is better done at a workshop with calibrated monitoring equipment) set the steering wheel dead centre (checking that that is also centre in terms of the steering box, which it may not if some clown has pulled the steering wheel off at some stage and replaced it a couple of splines out of true) and reconnect the steering arm (the first arm mentioned in this post) ensuring (by adjustment) that neither the steering wheel nor the front wheels are moved from their centre/straight ahead positions.

It's so simple in principle, yet difficult in practice, without the specialist equipment.

The worst complication is that it's likely to be an old truck (very few unmolested 80s about these days, sadly) and folks mess with them, and mess things like this up.

Getting it back to spec is a complex matter of dealing with all the unknowns, such as how much messing was done by various clowns.

JMHO, of course.

 

[Scoop]

You have confirmed my point - the two systems (steering and tracking) cannot be adjusted whilst they remain interconnected

 

[frank rabbets]

You have 2 systems.

!, Tracking.
2, Steering.

Both are adjusted independently and one does not influence the other. They can both be adjusted, the tracking connected or not to the steering but the steering adjustment can only be adjusted when connected to the track rod. If the steering is not connected you can't adjust it, whereas the track rod you can.

 

[Towpack]

If the tracking (toe in/out) is correct as set by the rod linking both wheels but the steering (box) is not centred then it will centre itself and pull left or right on a straight road with no hands on the wheel. I experienced this. Make certain the steering wheel is centred at the same point as the steering box by counting the number of turns lock to lock. If the steering wheel and box centre points don't match then somethings been off and replaced incorrectly. With tracking correct and steering centred then just reconnect the rod from the box to the LH wheel and adjust until the vehicle runs straight and true 'hands off'. JMO

 

[Dave2000]

Well I see Chris's wheel balancing with nails might cause leaks, if he spent some time looking around, he would find rubber tin tacks, these self seal. Of course he will need a glass hammer to bang them in.

Seriously though, something important not mentioned here but relevant anyway, when working on the steering box you should not spin the steering wheel left or right too many revolutions when it is disconnected, later models with air bags will incur damage to the 'squib' in the column, an expensive mistake if made.

regards

Dave

 

[frank rabbets]

TP if you drive the car the "steering" self centres as you say. If you disconnect the steering box and drive the car on a level surface the car will drive dead ahead due to the castor action. You wont find the steering wheel pulling though you'll be able to twiddle it round just as if it was on axle stands. There is no pulling on my wheel when disconnected but there was when my king pin bearings were worn in their dead ahead positions. If you rebuild these boxes, hubs etc you wont find any self centreing device and it won't make any difference whether or not the steering rod is connected to the tracking.

 

[frank rabbets]

P.S. After my 80 had done 50k miles from new I disconnected the rods to the hubs to free the threads. I noticed that if I turned one of the hubs by hand it would spring back to the ahead position with some force. I was mystified by this but just put things back together. After reading front axle lube problems I stripped the hubs and found the cause of the non design unintended self centreing of the hubs. When new the tapered roller kingpins rotate to give a smooth action to the steering but most of the wear takes place around the centre. There were grooves in the outer races where the rollers were sticking. There is a hell of a preload on these bearings so the bearings were forced into their ahead position.

 

[flint]

Do Toyota build in a slight bias to the nearside (UK vehicles) like VW etc.? The theory being that if you doze off at the wheel, it will head towards the left rather than into oncoming traffic. Primitive, but if the steering wheel is only slightly out, after setting the tracking, shortening one side of the track rod and lengthening the other an equal amount will correct it.

 

[frank rabbets]

There is defo no bias. On a level surface mine drives dead ahead. In this country it will slowly drift left and in Spain will drift right. Castor is welded equally on both sides. Both these drifts are due to ROAD camber. It seams odd to me that VW has a built in LHS drift ? So if you go abroad on a trip and doze off you might drift into oncoming traffic.

That's why on the 80 your steering wheel is slightly clockwise c/w centre and slightly anti clockwise on RHD roads. That's also why on UK roads the passenger side outer edge scrubs. Now that I do mostly Spain mileage I notice more scrubbing on drives side. To avoid this I rotate wheels.

When I took delivery of my 100 I noticed, even by eye, that the steering geometry was out. Castor and camber are adjustable. I had adjust camber and tracking. I've just had the air bag ECU replaced under recall. Toyota dealer also did a visual safety check including 3 depth measurements on each tyre. The 12 readings were all 6 mm.

 

[flint]

I think you’re right Frank, it has to be a road camber thing, though I have come across quite a few VWs that do tend to gently drift left, even on a seemingly level road. Possibly a story put about by dealers to explain bad setups. I did repair a Skoda that had a definite pull to the left, it was down to a failing steering sensor on the column that told the electric steering pump what to do. Progress eh ?