Steering slop

I have a 91 XJ with a 6" rockcrawler lift, Rustys steering conversion, RE steering box brace and heavy duty track bar and brace. The tie rod ends are relativly new. I can turn the wheel almost a 1/4 turn before it turns the wheels. Do you think the steeting gear or steering rod is shot? I have had 2 othe XJ's and never had this much steering play.

you'd get more info if you posted this in Mod Tech.
this forum is for vehicles OTHER than an XJ or MJ.

smsorensen said:

I have a 91 XJ with a 6" rockcrawler lift, Rustys steering conversion, RE steering box brace and heavy duty track bar and brace. The tie rod ends are relativly new. I can turn the wheel almost a 1/4 turn before it turns the wheels. Do you think the steeting gear or steering rod is shot? I have had 2 othe XJ's and never had this much steering play.

Click to expand...

You need to inspect the steering linkage when you turn the wheel i.e. get a helper.

If you turn the wheel and the linkage turns but not the wheels, you have a linkage problem.

If you turn the wheel and nothing in the linkage turns (like the pitman arm) you have a worn steering box.

I found some of my slop at the bottom of my trac bar. The bolt at the bottom has quite a bit of stress after lifting and some wheelin. I had to weld some reinforcement on the front side so that the bolt didn't wobble anymore.

bolt on axle end? I believe madxj.com has a solid fix for this problem.
Did you try searching?
Are you running an adjustable track bar with your lift?
OEM bar sucks and will severly limit articulation.

Look also for play in the pitman shaft bearing on the bottom of the steering box. When that wears, the pitman shaft will move sideways before it starts to turn, and that will cause a lot of slop.

I have the same steering system from Rusty's and had the same problem. The issue is that when turning the draglink, which is attached to the tie-rod, causes the tie-rod to roll creating a deadspot in your steering.

You can look at the JCR one-ton conversion which is similar to the Rusty's design only beefier, and they use a nylon washer sandwiched between the passenger side tie-rod end and the knuckle. This eliminates the rolling effect and really tightens the steering.

To cure this problem on Rusty's system, I went to ACE hardware and got a nylon washer and drilled it to the correct size and put installed in place of the boot on the passenger tie-rod boot, and this cured my vague and sloppy steering.

i had a 88 xj with the same problem after replacing the entire steering linkage (dont buy from old ladies) i found that there was some play in the steering geat on the ones ive seen it has a adjusting nut on the top of the box its a bitch to get to but all u have to do is.
disconect the inner tierod (at pitman arm)
loosen the lock nut with a box wrench wale holding the adjusting shaft with a allen socket
thean just tightn the nut untill u remove most of the free play (have a helper move the wheel and guage free play by the pitman arm0
tighten the lock nut and put it all back together
after i did mine it worked a million times better but i did have to reallign it