Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

[slow poke]

My Bronco is at Arabia's overkill getting some damage from a drivers side front accident I was involved in repaired. It appeared that the only structural damage was a bent track bar drop bracket,. but after replacing the track bar and bracket, as well as the 4X4X2 box....the truck is literally dangerous to drive on the freeway. It wanders left and right severely.

Toe is 1/8" toe in, Caster is 3.5 degrees. camber is .1 degree. Duff monster long arms, with rigid mount to a dana 60 in the front. Axels are equal length within 1/8", frame has been checked and is good.

Steering box/frame is plated, all new tie rod ends, Dana 60 with king pins might be the problem?? Might be my rag joint....

Any ideas on what to check or places that could help Arabias figure this out. Thus far insurance has been footing the bill....hopefully they will continue.

Appreciate your thoughts. Dave

[earlybronco72]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

If they haven't already checked make sure the axle mount on the track bar is solid.

[DirtDonk]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

They just put a riser on it a few days ago.
I believe Dave said his drive was after the riser install.

[slow poke]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

I did drive it after the new double heim track bar and track bar brackets both ends.

Wonder if it could be the Duff control arm connections to the axel?

I think Jeff Arabia is going to give up today so I should get it back and can start at the nut behind the steering wheel (me) and work my way through the system.

Seems like I need to check both steering and suspension. I'll start with steering I guess.

[DirtDonk]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

If you have to pick it up before I get a chance to go over to his shop and have a look-see (in case something's obvious), drive it over to my house and we can take a look at it together.

At least that keeps you off the freeway for a little longer too!

[welndmn]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

Add more caster, what bushings are in there right now?
If it handles like a shopping cart, not tracking right, it just needs more caster.

[DirtDonk]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

I'll jump in again until Dave gets back to the computer to confirm or deny what I see.
It's weird for sure. And every bit as scary to drive as Dave and Jeff were saying.

Caster is at (supposedly, according to a current printout) about 3 degrees positive. Not perfect, but certainly not scary territory.
Duff radius arms on custom mounts welded to the Dana 60 front. No C-bushings I'm pretty sure, but then again, I didn't look for 'em either.

Toe-in was fiddled with by Overkill, but neither adding or reducing changed the "looseness" of the feel.
They also raised and lowered the trackbar bolt at the riser to see if it made any difference. Still scary.

Wheelbase was verified square to about 1/8" or so, with the tools available.

New custom double-shear lower trackbar riser installed. Old drop cut off and cleaned up.
Looks like one of the custom Jeep control arm brackets was repurposed for this, but very clean and stout.
Double-Heim trackbar. No discernible movement anywhere.

4x4x2 box mounted on gusseted frame. It's unfortunately a little too far back, in order to clear the front body mount, instead of trimming the body mount to be able to move the box forward. But otherwise a nice clean and tight install.
Oh, new box too, as the old one was suspect in this weirdness.

New stabilizer shock was added (as a last resort) but the old one checked good anyway. We removed it temporarily strictly to reduce the rotational movement imparted to the steering linkage.
Which is all GM 1-ton stuff in TRO orientation.

Draglink and trackbar are almost perfectly parallel, and only "off" in their relative altitudes now. Typical for using a riser vs a drop bracket. So while they're parallel, they're still sort of moving in different planes. Kind of a trapezoid if you will.
Or, when looked at this way, kind of like half a 4-link would be.
So what effect does this have?

Doing the usual steering test, literally the only thing that seems out of whack is a more pronounced "rolling" of the body during the test. Is this a result of the orientation of the trackbar? Or maybe the tires twisting on their 10" wide wheels?

During the test, we (three of us) looked at every component from the steering shaft to the wheel bearings and king-pins, to the rear Heims on the Duff arms. This thing is as tight a Bronco as you've ever seen. Absolutely ZERO movement that should not be there.
Well, except for that very tiny amount of tie-rod rotation that we see a lot on aftermarket steering linkage, or worn out stock stuff. But even that was way below what most EB's experience.

When driving, it almost feels like it's experiencing severe YAW motions. When you steer the wheel, it's almost like it's pivoting on the center of the truck first, then steering. And it does indeed have a mind of it's own. Unlike Russell's with the Detroit that wanted to shift a lane to the left when you shifted the trans, Slow Poke's wants to veer right (hard!) when you shift. Or when it just decides it's had enough of all this going straight stuff and wants to dive to another side.

So Dave went home with the intent of starting from scratch and zeroing the steering box, then swapping to known good tires.
He reported last night that re-centering the box made a noticeable improvement (the first so far) and that he'd get the toe-in re-checked at Custom Alignment in Mt View, with a second-opinion printout from their alignment rack.
Will try the tires next, but his buddy only has a set of 32" tires, which is a big difference from the 35's on 10's the he's got on there now.

Anyone else in the area got good large tires that wants to have a little driveway swap action some night this week? Gil maybe? Smile, nod, wink buddy old pal?

Anyway, that's it for now as far as I know. Dave will pop back in with updates soon I'm sure.

[DirtDonk]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

Oh, the reason for the tire swap is because while we were scratching our heads, Will (third party WH customer picking up parts) thought to mention something usually suspect in weirdness, and that was the tires.

I've experienced the Bronco "diving" into corners and such, as well as acting like you were over-correcting when driving, so it was worth a shot. Hard to imagine it being so severe, even at slow speeds around 5 to 10 mph, but at this point, anything is worth checking.
And with those wide offset wheels, the extra leverage imparted into the system by a bad tire or two could be more noticeable.

Tires are not-new, but lots of tread, 35x12.50 BFG Mud's

[welndmn]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

I might of missed it, but I just wanted to confirm, it's "hunting" down the road right? As in it won't stay go straight, it does not wobble or anything.
Add more caster, I'd build a 20 minute bracket to just lower the duff arms to see if that helps.

[DirtDonk]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

That's actually a very good idea. Just as an experiment.
But it did run right down the road sweet as could be until the accident. So it's hard to say it was something that (like caster) would not have changed.

And it's not really "wandering" as we'd normally define it. Like with a loose trackbar or low caster reading. It's more of a "I think I'll go this way.... right now!" kind of thing.
No real consistency that we could see yet, and none of the old following grooves in the road either. It does it at 5mph on a smooth neighborhood street, and out on a 45mph expressway. If you're brave enough to get it up to that speed that is.
Which Dave did yesterday. What a stud!

Either way though, your idea is a good 'un. No problemo for me anyway.
Get right on it Dave!

[crawlin68]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

Just a thought, but the Duff Arms do have bushings even though you are running the welded brackets to the axle housing. There are two bushings per arm. You might want to pull those out and inspect them just to eliminate that as a possible source of a loose front end.

[Filgas]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

Maybe an ovaled out hole in one of the steering arms allowing the TRE to suddenly shift one way or the other?

[DirtDonk]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

Guess Dave is working late, so I'll keep chiming in.

Just a thought, but the Duff Arms do have bushings even though you are running the welded brackets to the axle housing. There are two bushings per arm. You might want to pull those out and inspect them just to eliminate that as a possible source of a loose front end.

I had wanted to call him earlier to confirm what I was thinking about what you said, but never got the chance.
I'm pretty sure though, that his arms have been customized to fit the 60 without the use of C-bushings.
The spring cups are perched on some fairly beefy and tall-ish brackets (custom) and the arms adapted to this bit.
James Roney built it up originally, and you know his attention to detail.
Maybe he'll see this and pop in to verify, unless Dave beats him to it.

Maybe an ovaled out hole in one of the steering arms allowing the TRE to suddenly shift one way or the other?

Hmm, worth a look.
Although that kind of thing is easy to miss, I will say that it's very likely, from talking to Jeff yesterday, that all the steering linkage had been removed at one point or another in this trial. So I would hope someone would have caught that kind of thing going on.
Of course, that's just the kind of thing you would not be looking for either. So it could have been missed.
For sure they didn't show themselves to be loose during the steering test on the ground. And you would think (hope?) that with all that torque fighting between the steering system and the large-ish tires, something like that would show itself pretty quick.
One would hope...

I'm not sure that's what it feels like either, but it's still worth a closer look.
Along with seeing if it's got C-bushings and checking those if it does.

I even had Dave turn the air-lockers on and off while we were driving, hoping that we were driving basically with a spool in the rear end. They were obvious when they locked and unlocked when he pushed the buttons though.
I was hoping it would be that simple, but no joy there either.

The most encouraging thing was when I called him last night (mainly to see if he made it back alive) and he said that centering the steering box at least made it so he was able to get it on the freeway. Not great, but at least not so constantly trying to kill you that it was hard to drive out of the driveway.
Hey, any improvement is a step in the right direction!

[earlybronco72]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

This may be way out in left field, but have you guys looked into the rear suspension? Could it be a centering pin broken on a leafspring, or a shackle hanging up and then releasing. When you mentioned it feeling like it was rotating in the center I started thinking that it may be steering from the rear.

[Broncrick]

Re: Steering help for Jeff Arabia on early Bronco

Stumper for sure, all good ideas put up. Looks like time for a camera under there to see what you can