I’ve had a bit of a setback, or lack of a setback, depending on how you look at it. The steering rack I had planned to use, a stock Mustang II rack is too long. It can be shortened, but requires some machine work to be done properly, and a lathe is one tool that I don’t have and probably won’t be able for afford or find room for in the near future. Having one custom shortened is a possibility, but at 4 times the cost of the stock rack, which is very common and inexpensive due to its popularity with hot rodders and other builders. The stock steering on the Datsun 620 truck is a steering box with a very low ratio that I didn’t want to live with as well as not having a collapsible column that would be dangerous if not illegal to drive with.
The original steering box connected to two tie rods that ran out to the wheels, Unequal lengths would mean that bump steer would be a bit different for each wheel, but I think that being about on the swing point for the left lower suspension arm it would be negligible and the long distance from the right arm would make is quite small as well.
Looking for alternatives I’ve found two. Hot rods sometimes use a cross steer setup where the rack is single sided and steers the right wheel and there is a tie rod that crosses over and steers the left wheel. This is doable, but that type of special steering rack is almost as expensive as the custom shortened one.
Another choice is to use a different steering box and basically replace the original steering setup with new parts. The Vega box is once such choice that available new. Not as cheap as the Mustang II rack, but half the price of the customized rack.
So the build is stopped for a bit until I nail down the solution to my steering. I hadn’t realized that the lower arms of the Datsun were so close together. Oops.
Steering towards the future
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