I have an 88 Formula that seems to be experiencing quite a bit of looseness in the steering. I jacked up the front end and removed the wheels. I found that the ball joints and tie rod ends seem to be in very good condition. My son and I tried to find play in the steering but could find none. This surprised me because we are experiencing quite serious bump steer and some wandering. Could it be the rear suspension? What should we check for?
The '88 is notorious for a long bolt on either side of the rear suspension that can get loose and cause severe handling issues. I hadn't tightened up one of mine enough on my Formula after doing some suspension work, and I almost put the car through the fence at autocross due to the dangerous handling. If you can't find reference to the bolts I'm referring to in a Search of the forum, I'm sure someone will come along and better describe where they are.
Ah, I didn't realize Will was suggesting anything more than simply making sure to tighten up the long bolt that holds one end of the lateral links.
I was suggesting more than that... if you tighten the bolt to 80 ftlbs on stock rubber bushings, you'll crush/split the center sleeves. The center sleeves in the stock rubber bushings are butted; the center sleeves in urethane bushings are continuous, but still thin wall, in my observations, so they're going to squish a bit and affect bushing friction. The steel balls used in rod ends to do not squish like that, and preserve a good stiffness ratio in the bolted joint to ensure that the bolt does not work loose.
My son and I checked the torque on the long bolts shown above. We found that both of them were torqued to less than 20 ft-lbs. We torqued them to 50 ft-lbs. Our subsequent test drive showed that the "looseness" in the steering was better, but mostly still there. We then replaced the end links on the front sway bar as the bushings were damaged. Maybe I had overtorqued them when I switched everything to poly about ten years ago. This also seemed to have little effect. Then my son noticed that there actually was play in the steering rack. We could not produce it with the wheels off, but the extra leverage that the wheels gave us was enough to allow us to move the rack (and the opposite wheel) without the steering wheel turning at all. The steering effect we get is most noticeable when changing lanes on the freeway. Once you start changing lanes, it is as if the pavement keeps pulling you in that direction. The same thing happens (mostly at high speed) when we hit a bump. The steering rack itself looks (externally) like it is in good shape. The boots are not cracked and there does not appear to be fluid leaking anywhere. Any ideas?
I didn't know the bucket came out. Is there anything tricky about it?
It's been a few years since I last removed one... but if I recall correctly, the only thing that required any effort whatsoever was drilling out the rivets that held the brake line supports.
