Crooked Steering Wheel

[iamtall77]

Okay i just did my clutch pedal assembly fix and now my steering wheel is pointed about 60° to the left. At this angle it still steers strait, but their are "sticking points" in the steering response. What i mean is that it seems to go slightly out of power steering at certain points. Almost as if i were driving a 4x4 with a locking front end or had a power steering pump going out. I understand that i moved the steering column quite a bit during my procedure, but enough to screw it up? I thought that if i just losen the two pieces of the steering column and straiten my wheel, that would help, but what about the steering response? did i screw something up? Anyone had a similar problem? Please help.

 

[giester2]

You probably just have the column in a bind. If the column is binding you will feel the steering go hard than easy, hard than easy as you turn the steering wheel from full left to full right or vice versa. This can also happen when the little u-joints start to go bad that are on the column, they flex easy on the x-axis but not on the y-axis. hope this helps a little.

oh and as far as your steering wheel being 60 degrees off, get rid of the binding first and see if that straightens it out. if it doesn't I can tell you another easy thing to do to fix that problem.

 

[xcelr8n]

^^ taking the wheel off and rebolting it on striaght?

 

[giester2]

I personally would take the coupling of the rack, center the steering wheel and then re-attach the coupling to the rack (with the wheels in the straight ahead position, of courses). There should not be any master splines on the pinion (input shaft) of the rack to prevent this. This may be easier than removing the steering wheel and putting it back on straight (if that is possible wth this vehicle).