Steering Play

[Bad GTX]

On my 67 GTX I have some play in the wheel. Even when it's not running you can move the wheel before it hits resistance.

When driving it down the road she's very responsive but I have to compensate for the play.

My last Mopar was a 73 Cuda and I don't recall it having the play in it.

Is this normal for that year?

Thanks,
Bad GTX

 

[silversedan]

open the hood and find the steering coupler on the steering box, hold one hand on the coupler and take other hand on the steering shaft and turn back an forth to see if the play is in the coupler, someone might have had it apart and put the shoes in wrong.

 

[AR67GTX]

Is it manual or power steering? Sometimes you can tighten the steering up a little by adjusting the pitman shaft lash adjuster on top of the box. You want to be careful though that you don't tighten it up to the point that you feel resistance or drag as you turn back through the center position - that means you have interference clearances and damage to the internals could occur.

Related to adjustment - these steering boxes, due to their design have variable clearances as they cycle. The tightest clearances are when the box is perfectly in the straight ahead position. Any movement off dead center results in increasing clearances and slop. If you turn the steering wheel all the way to the right and release pressure on it, you will find a lot of slop back and forth at full lock. Turn it back to dead center and you should not feel any slop. Because of this, if the steering box is not at dead center and indexed so the steering shaft /steering wheel and wheels are at dead center and the tie rods are not perfectly adjusted so the wheels are straight ahead - you could be driving down a straight section of the road with the steering box off-center and have increased play as a result. That's why indexing the column to the steering box and a good alignment are important to this. The tie rods need to be adjusted so that in straight ahead position, the steering box and steering wheel are at dead center.