E36 racks - Lock left more than lock right?

[Gruelius]

Hi all,

I hope you understand where im getting at as ive just seen some posts elsewhere and its got me thinking about how i set my old rack up, whether i did it correctly or not.

I had poor bump steer problems.

Now when i installed the rack, the first time i had the centre wrong and the shop aligned the tierods equal, this caused my steering to be muffed up, could do wicked left hand turns but right hand turns sucked.

So what i did was i undid the tierods, measured the travel, put the rack at the exact centre, then made the tierod lengths unequal and my steering was centred and lock to lock was even. Now i noticed that the steering was much less direct on centre (makes sense being progressive). Now my bump steer was kinda bad but i could deal with it.

So is that the correct procedure? or should the tierods be equal length?

Please only weigh in if you have actual knowledge on the topic, i did it that way because without any suspension knowledge i just figured it makes sense for it to be on the dead centre of the rack.

cheers

[jlevie]

The way to do this is to center the rack (equal extension on both sides), then center the steering wheel, and finish by setting correct toe.

[Gruelius]

yeah thats what i did, so one tierod was much longer than the other.

Cheers

[Madhatter]

You need to centre the rack and have the wheels pointing roughly straight ahead when you fit everything back up otherwise you'll get the lengths off quite a bit.

Really, the only way to have one side really, really far off is if 1) they did a really bad alignment, or 2) something is bent in the rear, so when they did a thrust angle correction when doing the alignment, had to compensate one way more than the other.

How much are we talking, 10mm? more?

[Gruelius]

probably about 25mm. this is with a e36 rack mind you.

I centred the rack by measuring the travel and halving it, then installing the steering wheel to be perfectly centred.

I then confirmed it by measuring the amount of turns either way (equal)

I then took it to the shop to get them to align it based on the steering wheel, which they did.

I could then equally turn left as i could right and my steering wheel was centred.

when i get the rack out of the car ill do some measurements for you guys. But yeah its the one thing that i noticed different to the e30 rack haha

[Madhatter]

what about when you threaded the tie rods in though? were the tie rod ends even when it went into the car? thats what I was saying, if the wheels were pointing straight ahead, even though you have the steering wheel straight and the rack centred, your lenghts will still be off.

[Gruelius]

i had the tyre shop do the alignment with the car on their alignment machine, with the steering wheel at the dead centre of the rack.

[Madhatter]

im not talking about when they did the alignment, im talking about when you put the rack in, or did you use E36 tie rod ends, etc too so you never had to fit them?