Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
My Karmann Ghia suffers an uncontrollable wheel shimmy without the damper.Perhaps the rack and pinion counteracts that.Don't know.Just wanted to mention that.  |
I think the shimmy in the stock steering is due to the unequal length of the two tie rods. I'm sure there are some wierd geometry and toe changes from side to side under compression or impact on primarily one wheel. The dampner is a bandaid in my opinion. I know whenever we had a rack that was not perfectly centered you would get some bumpsteer, and you had to correct whatever had the rack misaligned even sometimes replacing the crossmember where the rack was mounted. I always ran the steering wheel lock to lock to make sure the travel was exactly the same from one side to the other. If not then clamp the steering wheel so the rack is perfectly centered, and figure out why (if so) it is not perfectly centered.
I'm not sure if the OE box has a master spline. It it does not then the pittman arm could be off a spline or more and that could be the source of a shimmy, assuming everything else is in specs.
regards
Mech