A Little steering problem

When I was hooking up my discos last night I noticed some gouging on the bottom of the link.


I found that at full right lock the link on the steering rod coming from the pitman arm is right up against the link and bracket.


I need to figure if anything is bent aothough it doesn't look like it. I wonder if the combination of the lift and rotating the pinion up just got these too close together. One possible solution would be a drop pitman arm, but I need to figure out if anything else is bent first.

Bend the draglink forward a bit and call it done. What's your caster set at?

Not an unusual issue at all. Welcome to the club. Many rigs have this same problem with our stock "inverted "y" steering system.

I'd be less inclined to tell you to bend the drag link.... it's bent enough in stock form, bending it any more just increases the risk that it'll continue to bend that way if you should find yourself having to turn hard to the left......

A drop pitman arm will bring that drag link angle down some and help keep it from binding against the link and bracket.

Or fab up a slightly longer bracket to have welded to the factory one (trimming off the part that curves outward and then run your disco on that one side a little shorter - it won't hurt anything.

How much lift do you have? That looks like a really severe case....

A DPA might fix one problem, but its going to put your drag link and track bar out of parallel - so you'll end up with some crazy bump-steer.

Looks like its about time to upgrade to JCR's inverted-T setup

Thanks for the input. If I use a drop pitman, how much should it be? I have a RC 4.5 inch lift. I have adjustable uppers and am running 5 deg caster to get my pinion up to 7 deg. I have the LP30. I hate to add any more caster to fix this as I had front vibes at 8 deg caster.

Is it possible to use a drop pitman arm and also drop the track bar too?? To keep them parallel?

Is this the JCR setup your talking about?

http://www.jcroffroad.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=1TNST&Category_Code=S6

I just cut a pie shaped notch in my sway bar bracket and rolled it back a little a re-welded it,no more problem!

RCP Phx said:

I just cut a pie shaped notch in my sway bar bracket and rolled it back a little a re-welded it,no more problem!

Click to expand...

I'm gonna try to do that this weekend. Sounds like the best, simplest, and cheapest idea. I'm gonna do both sides so I don't have to shorten one link. Make both sides the same. Thanks for the idea.

Did it! Seems to have helped but not a complete fix. Also had a problem on the track bar bracket clearance, but all in all a good fix. Thanks for the idea.

Wow,thats weird,I thought you were talking about the the pass side!Ive never seen any issues with the driver side.

RCP Phx said:

Wow,thats weird,I thought you were talking about the the pass side!Ive never seen any issues with the driver side.

Click to expand...

Well I did both sides so I wouldn't have to run one shorter sway bar link. The problem was on the passenger side, I just snapped the pic of the driver's side as that was the way the wheels happened to be turned.

Just chop the damn things off and ditch the sway bar....