Steering 1

After almost a whole year of horrors and loss and taking time to FINALLY finish Wifey’s Art Studio shed thing, I’m finally getting some work done on Pandora!

The steering has always been kind of sloppy. I’ve always been more interested in handling around corners more than a straight line, so tightening up the suspension was one of the first things I addressed early on. I redid the entire suspension with new front and rear springs, all new joints and bushings, bigger front sway bar and the addition of a rear one. I was especially proud of the polyurethane control arm bushings and fancy ball joints with spring-loaded tensioners inside that was supposed to keep them working as new through their entire lifespan. I also decided to replace the power steering with manual, using a steering gear from a car that was being parted out. Back when you could find ’69 Camaros being parted out. It didn’t take long before the polyurethane bushing started squeaking like mad. One of the ball joints failed immediately and another within a couple of months. I replaced all the ball joints with normal ones and adjusted the steering box as much as it would allow, intending to reinstall the power steering system, but this is about when she was parked. And this is how she sat for all these years.

I bought a close-ratio power steering box last year along with some random parts to get that whole system replaced, but too many other things kept coming up that prevented me from installing it before winter. I started finishing the Art Studio this Spring and took a break to to start on the car in early June. I got the front end apart exactly one day before it started raining ash and we got the alert to be ready to evacuate due to a large fire. In my scramble to get it back together, I found that 19 year old me had damaged some stuff that I’d need to replace. As the fire threat abated, I was able to work on a plan, as well as the studio.

I decided to go with a place called BMR. I got their tubular upper and lower control arms, new hardware, new body mount bushings and subframe connectors to stiffen up the link between the body and subframe. The uppers are their pro-touring arms with tall ball joints to give a little better caster/camber. The lowers have more polyurethane bushings, but I’m told the new ones are quieter. Plus all of them have grease zerks so they can be lubricated anytime, which is nice. Now I just have to get everything installed!