Failed experiment…

It’s alive, It’s Alive, It’s….DEAD.  For f^ck sakes….

The steering experiment is a flop.  I had high hopes for it, but it took some trial and error to see the failures in it.  Of course, I can find other people’s failures online, but only when you know where to look after the fact.  Isn’t that always the case??

So, let’s recap; the reason I went with the mk1 Golf steering rack and pinion was 2 fold;

1. the original steering setup was 50 years of worn out, the box was dry and loose, the idler was seized, the cross bar probably could have been resurrected with a new pair of boots, but the tie rods were worn out as well, so doing the math, I was looking at around $800 for refurbing this stuff.  

2. I already had VW mk1 golf/Jetta steering racks in the parts hoard so I THOUGHT I could beat out that $$ outlay by using them, but the front steering on the bug made the LHD drive golf rack & pinion work backwards, and when looking at RHD racks from VW Heritage, was astounded to see they were only $183 delivered.

Fast forward a couple years, and actually driving the car over 100 km/h, there’s a massive oscillation occurring that makes this car undriveable.  I couldn’t put 2 and 2 together during the build up phase until actually getting road time.

So here’s my cognitive disconnection; steering boxes basically disappeared from most cars in the 1970s, being replaced with superior rack and pinion.  Rear-engined cars at the time all used steering boxes (until ’75 in the super beetle) but the key missing piece I didn’t see at first was the innocuous mini shock absorber – the steering damper.  I assumed that doing away with the box and pittman arm meant that the damper could go too.  Not so.  The Damper is there because the Centre of Gravity on a rear engine car is just ahead of the back wheel, whereas on front engined cars the CofG sits pretty well on top of the steering rack, not because of the steering box.  So on the mk1 Jetta for example, it drives down the road like a lawn dart flies thru the air, but driving the bug without a damper is like throwing a lawn dart with the weight on the fin end, not the tip.

In 1975 the super beetle changed to a steering rack & pinion, but it didn’t use a visible steering damper…BUT, in looking at pictures of old used, beat up racks, I notice they got a little oily on one end?  Did they have a damper built in?  Or was it internally sealed in such away to mimic a damper? Cuz I can’t fathom use without it.

So, alright, easy answer, maybe we can add to the rack, a damper?  Not so fast.  The damper once charged, has a tremendous amount of pressure inside it, so mounting it to a tie rod, will violently twist it, causing tons of stress to the tie rod end.  It would also push the tie rod down, which would probably react adversely during a sharp turn.  The damper only works in one plane of direction, which means it would have to be mounted to the rack portion, difficult to do with the rubbers in the way.  So in my setup, there’s no provision to fit one.F^ck!

You can see on this CSP example, they figured it out.  They mounted centre mounts to one end of the rack only, allowing the damper to mount to it so it only goes left and right, not twisting or going up and down.  It also solves another problem the mk1 rack has, bump steer.  I could feel a bit of it on the Rack &Pinion because the closer to the centreline of the car that you pivot the tie rods from, the better you lessen the bump steer.

So there you have it.  $860 outlayed to collect up all the stock parts to reverse the rack and pinion project…for now?  I’ll try out the CSP type mount to the rack on the bench, and if it looks successful, maybe, MAYBE, we’ll revisit this in the future, but for now this gawd damn wallet pit of a car owes me some cruise time in 2022!