1962 steering unstable when going around right hand curves | Page 2 | Ford Thunderbird club group 1955-2005 T-Bird models

1962 steering unstable when going around right hand curves

  • Thread starter Thread starter Forbird
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Jim5 said:
I had this exact issue with a 55 Tbird w/o power steering. I discovered that the top bolt of my left rear shock was missing and the stud had come out of the steel saddle of the chassis. The driving sensation was as you described, I felt like I needed a rear anti-sway bar or the car was going to roll up on two tires. Problem resolved after reattaching the bolt. I also severely needed a front end alignment, which was a different matter.
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Thanks I will definitely look into that. Looking over my rear suspension was one of the things on my list to check.

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I checked a lot of stuff this morning and found no smoking guns.
I checked to see if the rear shocks were tightened fully
I checked for bump stop clearance
I checked for front sway bar malfunction
I did a basic inspection to see if everything seemed tight
I checked to see if the gear box was misaligned in some way
I was thinking I might try disconnecting my front sway bar and seeing if maybe I am having some kind of binding issue because I have to do a little customization in order to get it to bolt up correctly

the only thing I could find was low tire pressure which might just be the culprit. The front left tire had about 25 psi. Which is the tire that all the wait would be on for a right hand turn.

right now I am trying to decide if I have enough energy to move all the cars that are in the way in order to take it for a test drive.
 
Next weekend I think I will try and take it for a spin with the better tier pressure and if that didn’t fix it I will try disconnecting the sway bar and then going for a drive. Maybe I will try and install the old one and see what happens
 
When I was looking at my rear shocks I had to rear wheels on ramps and the front tires on the ground. It looked like my shocks were nearly fully extended which didn’t seem right. It was extended enough so that I could see the shaft between the sleeve and the body of the shock. Does that sound normal. Could not having enough rear shock extension be the cause of my problem?
 
I found this on the Jalopy Journal. Has anyone heard about this? Is it possible to put a 63 gear box on a 62?

'62 'Birds had a problem when new with steering gearboxes that resulted in a major recall effort back in the day. If the piston inside the gearbox has a nick in it or a scored cylinder wall, it will adversely affect how the steering works: replacing all the tie rod ends and linkage will do NOTHING to fix a bad box. If your car pulls hard right (and you'll know it when it happens) when turning the wheel right, it's a symptom of a bad box. You would need to get a different box, preferably from a late '62 or '63, or get your box rebuilt by a REPUTABLE shop with EXPERIENCE in redoing them.
 
A little bit of an update. A couple of weeks ago I took the car to the alignment shop because I noticed that one of the tie rods were extended much further than the other side. I was hoping that this somehow was causing the problems. They evened things out and now it seems like it is not functioning correctly when I go around a curve in both directions. I don’t know it that is helpful in trying to figure things out or not.


I have to take the car back to that shop for another issue this week. While I am there I am going to ask them to try and set the alignment to the original specks that I got from the repair manual and see if that helps. I have not started going down the new wheel route yet just because I need to refill my wallet first.
 
I am saving up to get new wheels and tires but in the meantime while driving the car today I noticed that if I am stopped and I move the wheel back and forth I can feel a bit of a tight spot or lump in the steering wheel I go past center and it also makes a clicking noise. I don’t know if this is a clue or not.
 
Forbird said:
When I am going around a right hand curve it is very difficult to make a smooth turn. When I am going around the curve it feels like the I am constantly having to adjust the wheel while going around the curve. If you have ever watched a video of someone trying to drive on 2 wheels and the car tends to turn tun and the driver is constantly having to make little adjustments in order to keep it upright. That is how I imagine that it feels. It’s like I am trying to balance while turning and the slightest adjustment is very sensitive. Like every right hand curve requires a bunch of little turns. I have had the alignment done by the mechanic and have had another mechanic double check it. The only Suggestion that the mechanic had was that he thought that the tires are too tall and wide and that the wheels have too little back spacing and that going back to the stock wheels and tires would help.
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This may not be the case but I rebuilt the entire front end of a SUV for weird steering only to find the problem in the positrac rear. The clutches were binding up on gradual turns and it felt like it was in the steering. Remedy turned out to be a fluid change w/ the proper friction modifier.
 
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