Use the intuitive search filters here at to pinpoint the perfect steering rag joint or steering coupler now. Ready to pick the best steering shaft and steering wheel coupler for your project? You can search by specific car, truck, or SUV year, make, and model here-as well as shop by steering shaft end coupler design. Classic Industries offers a wide selection of Steering Components for your 1961 Ford Thunderbird. In these instances, a stronger, upgraded steering shaft coupler can help ensure your day on the trails doesn’t end with a walk out of the brush. Perhaps more importantly, off-roaders often like to run larger tires and, when driven over rough terrain, it can wreak havoc on a steering shaft. That’s especially true for performance applications and for off-roaders that demand more robust steering system components. Still, many steering couplers feature a more traditional U-joint as well. After all, what good are suspension upgrades and big horsepower numbers if you can’t hang on to the wheel? Used properly, a flexible steering column coupler rag joint will make the vehicle easier and more comfortable to drive, which goes a long way to improve vehicle control and handling. If you’ve ever had to wrestle a steering wheel that’s constantly jerking out of your hands, or if you notice your arms are really fatigued after a long drive, then you already know how important a quality steering rag joint coupler can be. That’s why steering couplers often use rag joints. Yet perhaps just as important as flexibility is a steering coupler’s ability to suppress road vibration and jolts that could be transmitted from the steering system, up the steering shaft, and into the steering wheel-before entering your hands. This flexibility is vital to preventing your steering shaft from binding, bending, and ultimately breaking due to excessive force or extreme steering geometry. Commonly used to connect your steering wheel to the steering input shaft, a steering coupler obviously has a really important job to do.īut in addition to ensuring that you’re able to maintain steering control of your vehicle, a steering shaft coupler has to be flexible to adapt to a wide range of steering column applications and steering shaft positions. Depending what type of coupler you have you may have to do one part of the coupler or both parts.Building a custom, one-off steering system? Need to repair, replace, or restore your worn-out stock steering setup? Maybe you’re upgrading or changing your suspension geometry? Whatever project you’re tackling, a quality replacement steering shaft coupler should probably be on your parts list. Or just pull the column like I did since I had some other things to do with it.ģ) Remove the coupler from the steering box.Ĥ) Clean the coupler of any accumulated gunk.ĥ) Next you have to grind away the heads of the bolts that hold the existing rag joint together. Make sure you fully remove the bolts since on mine I could not remove the coupler until I had since it had a "notch" on it that would not let it pull free if the bolt was in it.Ģ) Loosen the steering column at the brackets so it can be pulled back to remove the shaft from the coupler. Without turning the steering wheel, honk the horn. Attach a jumper wire on each splined clamp. If the horns now sound, you know there is a ground issue at the rag joint. To do the replacement I needed to do a couple of things.ġ) Remove the bolts that hold the coupler to the steering box and steering shaft. A way you can test the ground through the rag joint is turning the steering wheel with the car off to put tension on it, and honk the horn. Upon searching I found some references to what to do and figured I would share the steps in case anybody else ever wants to do this and are not sure of the steps to take. It also helped that the replacement kit was $8.00 at Kragens, a local auto parts store.īut since I had never done this, I was not really sure how you did it so off to the internet I went. Rubber piece from the 1969 steering column I had. If you are asking why I would do this it is because from my understanding it would help keep the steering "tight" since I would be replacing the original I was working on my steering column and decided I would replace the original rag joint while I had the column out.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |