Steering woes? (Long story not made short)
Since installing the spacers under my coil springs, I have been wanting to fine tune my steering alignment better. I had maxed out the camber/caster bushing on the passenger side and needed a little more adjustment on the driver side. So I ordered the adjustable style camber/caster bushings a while back and finally had a chance to install them. I could visually see a lot of positive camber on the driver side and even wondered if there might be a wheel bearing problem there or too much caster causing the bottom of the wheel to be pushed inwards during forward travel. Trust me. all sorts of thoughts fly through my little skull.
After jacking up the driver side wheel, I gave it a good wiggle and felt some play. Upon investigating, I found the ball joint post was loose in the camber/caster bushing. So I installed the driver side bushing. After tightening the pinch bolt, I gave the wheel a wiggle and there was still play there. That's weird. I have a spare ball joint on hand that has been waiting for installation on the passenger side. But didn't want to get that deep into things on this particular day. So I sacrificed the 0.008" piece from a cheap feeler gauge set as a shim and it tightened down nicely. On to the passenger side.
Made the same "wiggle check" to see if everything was tight on this side. "clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk" Uh-oh. what's that play coming from? Ball joints at the wheel all seemed fine. Found play in the tie rod ball jont where it attaches to the traverse bar of the Super-runner K-link steering setup. The stud was loose in the hole on the traverse arm. I remember having trouble tightening one of these when I first installed the kit. But I thought I had gotten it tight. Obviously, I was mistaken. So I took it apart, cleaned the grease out of the hole and off the ball joint stud, re-assembled and tried to tighten it. No go. I tried putting pressure on the tie rod to keep the joint from spinning. Still wouldn't tighten no matter what I tried. Well, I wanted to do some other things that day. So I went on to do my alignment and took the truck for a test drive. The alignment was terrible. Drive-able but sloppy and dangerous. I gave up for the day.
Today, I did some checking. What I found is that the tapered hole in the traverse bar had been tapered too deep. Photos below. You can see that the stud sticks through further than the one for the driver side. In fact, the castle nut goes so far that it almost clears the cotter pin hole. in another photo, you can see the end of the taper protruding on the nut side of the traverse bar when I squeeze all the play out of it. There is a flat washer that goes on behind the nut. I could probably drill a bigger hole in the washer so it clears the taper and that might let me tighten the nut properly, But that will also put the ball joint closer to the back side of the traverse bar and limit it's rotational travel when everything moves and flexes while driving. That might be a temporary fix.
So, I think my plan is to build new tie rods using DOM tubing and heim joints. That way I'm dealing with straight through holes where things join together. I also want to modify the bottom of the traverse bar where the tie rods connect. I will probably weld another piece of steel on to it so that my mounting holes are lower. That will help put the tie rods more in-line with their mounting points on the steering knuckles. My mods will loosely combine some hints from the article about this in our steering "How To Tech" articles and the mods that BlackbII did when he created his own K-link steering setup from scratch. Eventually, I want to replace the poly bushings in the idler arm with bearings since I am also noticing wear/play in those bushings.
I would welcome input from any steering gurus out there. I have time. Still need to buy a welder since I don't have access to one any more. I still think this is a good steering design concept. It just needs some tweaking.
Here you can see the tie rod ball joint stud protruding more for the driver side (right side - the photo is upside down)
overall view of the passenger side
Tapered part of ball joint stud protruding way too far.
traverse bar idler arm. bushings in upper end have excessive play