Light steering & 'pulling' on uneven surfaces

Doober

Moderator
Jun 2, 2003
14,704
1
38
Catalina, AZ
www.cardomain.com
I'm only at the point of getting it to drive down the road & look decent for the wedding, but I have a list of things I want to look into afterwards. One thing is the current crappy steering situation. Front parts are tight (tie rods, pitman arm, etc.), but the steering feels almost 'floaty' and I don't remember it always feeling like that, I'm sure part of it is the steering box, because it's one of those deals where I can almost steer with one finger. I'm thinking I would like to attempt a rebuild at home - so far my only things left to actually do myself on this car are rebuilding a steering box and steering pump, rebuilding an alternator/starter, set up a rearend carrier, and rebuild a manual transmission (considering it for the T5 when it's time)... I grew up with the 'fix it' instead of just 'replace it' mentality.

I've looked a little into articles on rebuilding and what's involved, and the box itself doesn't look like too difficult of a job to do, but I'm curious how I would go about getting the parts I need to change it over to a different ratio and adjust the steering effort. I've already tinkered a little with the preload bolt on top, but the box seems to be in relatively decent shape overall because I saw minimal benefit from the adjustments I did.

My other concern is the overall floaty feel while driving down the road... it just doesn't feel right as tight as the rest of the suspension feels. It rides and drives similar to my Fiero (tight, minimal body roll), but it does that thing where it seems to jolt back & forth to little grooves or potholes it finds in the road, and I find myself moving the steering wheel a bit more than seems like normal to keep the car straight.

Any suggestions? Like I said, front steering parts are all tight (very low miles on a couple of the tie rods and center link). Am I to the point of looking into the typical 'fix it' parts for G-Body understeer/geometry?

Suspension setup is
Hotchkis 1902 springs on all 4 corners
Low mile stock replacement shocks (Gabriel I believe)
All suspension/body bushings are new (rubber suspension, poly body)
Front:
Belltech 2" drop spindles (G-Body/S-Series, don't know the number off hand)
F41 bars (triangulating braces + GP brace)
3rd gen Camaro sway bar (I believe 34mm? Car-Part.com lists 3 sizes and I know it's not the smallest one)

Rear:
Boxed stock trailing arms
Factory rear sway bar
 

malicad

Dragway Regular
Dec 8, 2009
1,383
0
0
South Milwaukee, WI
"Darty", or "wandering" steering may be the result of not enough toe in, in regards to the wheel alignment. When was the last time you had it aligned?
 

Doober

Moderator
Thread starter
Jun 2, 2003
14,704
1
38
Catalina, AZ
www.cardomain.com
I aligned it at a shop I worked at a few years ago. It wasn't perfect but I believe the alignment computer had everything in the 'green' zone besides caster on one side. I would have added some more shims to try to get it perfect, but ran out of threads on the uca cross-bar bolts.
 

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