Steering

I got about 4 hours in this week on the car. I started out messing around with the gas pedal. It turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected at first. Actually, I had to end up taking the whole thing apart from what came in the package shown in last week's post in order to re-orient the pedal part (looks like a spoon) to the other side of the pivot, and to create the angle for the top part of the pedal which will connect the wire that opens up the carburetor when you depress the pedal. I decided to wait on continuing with that part until I got the steering shaft stuff fixed afterall.

So I decided to whip out my cheap little dremel tool and try to whittle out the inner bore of the steering shaft bearing by a couple of thousandths of an inch. That actually ended up working quite well. So on to actually assembling the steering shafts.

I had a hard time getting everything to come together the way the manual outlined. Maybe if I had another set of hands, I could have done it. Instead I connected everything and raised it all into place. That worked, but I found it to be binding. First, it was that the shaft coming up to the wheel was rubbing on the dashboard frame. A little dremel grinding fixed that. Then I put it all together again and it was still binding. After a half an hour or so, I figured out that the mid-shaft was not put together properly. I had inserted the shaft too far into the joint so that when it turned, it would hit on the other shaft. I fixed that, but there still is binding. Not as bad, but I haven't figured out the cause yet. Anyway, here are some pictures showing the work so far...

Here you can see the U-joints where the steering shaft goes through the firewall.


Here you can see the steering components in the footbox.


Here you can see the steering shaft coming up through what will eventually be the dash and the hub for the steering wheel.


I will have to find the source of the binding before I can proceed with anything else.