show and tell! Firm Feel sector shaft brace
thank you very much for the candid feedback.
what box did you install this on?
And how old is it before you left metaled it?
A few years back (~2k miles ago?) I swapped the power steering unit out in favor of a remanufactured large sector 16:1 manual box from eBay, hoping to save weight and drag on the motor.
Yeah, a quality unit from one of the specialized vendors who participate in the forum probably would have been a a better choice. In all honesty, this reman box was 30% the price of some of the “preferred” sources and after the many thousands I’ve poured into the Dart in recent years, saving this money really mattered.
So this box worked well enough but I was never happy with the combination of very high effort and significant slop. Messing with the adjustment on the box helped a little but not nearly enough.
After getting the car aligned last summer which provided 5 degrees of caster, the steering effort went up a bit more and it seemed to exacerbate the excessive play. Eliminating this known deflection point in the steering linkage seemed like a solid place to start…and it looks like that was the right call.
Subjectively, I would guess that 1/3 or more of the play has been eliminated. It’s still there but the difference is noticeable.
I didn’t expect it to help with the weight of the steering but it actually did, likely because eliminating deflection applies a more direct vector of force on the system and probably reduces some friction in the joints by keeping the geometry closer to the intended angles. Just a guess.
