Cross steering setup

Close Ad. The Future. Join MotorTrend. Eric Geisert writer. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. With so little engagement of the telescoping section, it was fairly loose. I could have drilled and bolted those two pieces together or even welded it, but instead, I reasoned that adding a spacer at the base of the shaft would shove the two sections farther together and that would tighten things up.

The extension did the trick, steering shaft is nice and tight and no need to make any permanent modifications to it. This part is available here in 1" and 2" versions. I arrived first thing Monday morning and by noon, the stock steering box, torque rod and bracket were removed and mounting holes for the IFS steering box were drilled.

Later, sleeves were added to the lower two holes through the frame and a bracket for the upper mount were all welded in place. The stock steering arms were removed, the driver's side J-arm was modified by cutting off the drag-link end and a pre-fabricated double arm was used on the passenger side. A Marlink heavy duty tie rod was installed in place of the stock tie rod and a used IFS power steering box was installed.

After hooking up all the parts and doing a quick alignment, I was on the road by the end of the day. A week of wheeling was in store in the Southern California desert. The steering worked great for the trip and even without a steering stabilizer, it was rock solid and it handled like a sports car albeit one on 33" mud tires and 4" of lift. Next trip was to Panamint and Death Valleys a month later.

I started hearing a creaking sound from the front end. Upon returning home I found the nut holding the pitman arm to the steering box was a bit loose, so torqued it and the other bolts down. This seemed to quiet the strange noise for a while, anyway. It would return, and I'd torque the fasteners, until about 5 months later, no amount of torquing would silence the noise. I figured it might be the steering knuckles making noise and a leaking axle oil seal and a coat of gear oil covering the side of my 4Runner prompted me to rebuild the front axle.

So, I'm all set with my crossover steering, all the kinks are ironed out, why mess with a good thing? One day, I stumbled upon a deal too good to pass up, a used HySteer crossover kit. So, I snapped it up in an instant. Actually, at the same time, I was toying with the idea of swapping my front differential over to an FJ high-pinion unit, which would raise the front drive shaft about 4".

This would get the back of the axle more clearance, but what about the front? So, that's where the HySteer comes into the picture. It took me a few months to get around to installing the HySteer kit. After breaking both Marfield joints at Panamint Valley Days, I had the axle torn apart, so why not take the plunge. Above, you can see the driver and passenger side steering arms with the crossover drag link and tie rod connections.

Tags: Tech , Steering. More Info. Related Articles. How to install an electronic power steering unit in a micro sprint and the benefits of using power steering. This article includes which parts to use to complete your power steering installation. Not sure which steering wheel adapter is right for your project?

For many years the only radius rods available were either the split wishbones or a more refined version called hairpins. Split wishbones are affixed to the axle and on the side of the frame at single points. A hairpin affixes to the axle at two points above and below and to the frame at a single point. Both setups worked great with dropped I-beam axles back in the day because the radius rods allowed the axle to move up and down, and the flexibility of the I-beam allowed it to twist slightly when necessary to accommodate strange torsion loads, such as when going up steep driveways or over bumps in the road.

Since original Ford steering boxes usually wore out long before the rest of the car, rodders in the '40s and '50s resorted to using '40 Ford boxes, and then later F units as replacements, which were basically more heavy-duty versions of the system already in place. With a dropped axle, split wishbones, and a stock or F steering box in place, the rod that runs from the Pitman arm to the spindle called a drag link was forced to operate at an unusual angle due to the geometry change.

What would happen is that, as the frontend went up and down, it pulled the steering rod back and forth along with the rest of the suspension, causing the wheels to turn on their own, which is called bumpsteer. Essentially, chassis flex could make the wheels turn without any driver input on the steering wheel.

This problem became even worse in the late '60s, when Mustang steering boxes began to replace F units. Due to the way they were designed, the Mustang boxes needed to be mounted with the Pitman arm pointing up rather than down like a stock box, so the drag link became very short. The shortened drag link further accentuated the bumpsteer problem.

When tube axles became popular, some argued that their rigidity and inability to flex could exert extreme pressure on the single mounting point of the radius rod, which could cause it to tear out of the frame. The innovative system works great, and yet many rodders are mystified as to whether or not a tube axle can properly function with a standard split wishbone or hairpin setup. Do you have to use a four-bar system when running a tube axle?

There isn't a great amount of travel built into the frontend of a hot rod. If the total front suspension travel is 6 inches the wheels can move 3 inches up and 3 inches down , the I-beam axle can't twist more than 6 inches in both directions. If one wheel is loaded and one is unloaded, as when a car with a four-bar goes through a driveway diagonally, the radial twist in the four-bar is greater than the radial twist in an I-beam axle.

In addition to allow more freedom of motion, a four-bar system is built lighter than a heavy-duty tube axle, so if something was going to break from work hardening or twisting, it would be the four-bar setup, not the axle. A four-bar system allowed rodders to move the Mustang box farther back, stretching the drag link and eliminating quite a bit of bumpsteer.

This occurs basically because the longer the drag link, the less it will be affected by the suspension travel as the car moves down the road. As an example of this phenomenon, lay a pencil next to a straightedge and measure its length. Then move one end of the pencil up about an inch, leaving the other end touching the straightedge so it is now at a diagonal angle. Notice that the overall length covered by the pencil got shorter. This is exactly what the drag link of a car does as the front suspension goes over a bump, pulling on the spindle and turning the wheels.