Would this increase or decrease bump steer?

I found this pic. I know it's a solid axle, but I was wondering if I did this on my TTB if it would be better than stock?





I've put my truck on the alignment rack 4 times in two days. I've had trouble with the steering wheel being clocked. there is play in the setup but i have replaced the tie rods already. I think most of the play is in the gear box so I'm looking into that too. I'm thinking of keeping the stock tie rods, and making or sourcing a tie rod link, then have the pitman arm link attach to that. Instead of having like in the pic where the pitman link attaches to the right tie rod.

help or hurt? how 'bout it?

That style will not work with TTB if i am correct. I'll let someone with more knowledge fill you in on why.

For one the TTB flexes-- a solid rod between the two would try and flex too. Secondly your trac bar (the bar at an angle) would only be connected to one side.

1.There is a preload set screw on the top of the steering box. Loosen the 5/8" lock bolt and adjust the preload screw (righty tighty) but try not to go more than 1/2 turn at a time. Test drive and repeat as necessary. That will 'tighten' it up some.

If the worm/ball gears in the steering box are truely worn out, this won't help much. If you tighten it too much you'll feel it binding when crossing center and free-up right or left of center. If you have to tighten until it binds to make the wheels respond to slight steering wheel movement, the box might be worn out.

2.Your tie rods need to pivot at the same length from the knuckle as your beams do, in the same plane, so they travel as if they were one and the same. anything other than that and you will have bump steer. That's why there are drop pitman arms, to get the drag link and tie rods back into the same plane as the beams. The more parrallel to ground, the better.

TTB's don't need Trac bars cause the beam pivots prevent the axel from moving side to side. (SAS needs trac bar to prevent side to side movement and it too needs to be as parrallel to ground as possible so it passes through it's center of arc during it's travel or else it will move the axel to one side when the axel travels up and down)

That's why the steering linkage on a stock X is the the 'Y' configuration it is, to mirror the axel beams.

Albino 94LTD said:

2.Your tie rods need to pivot at the same length from the knuckle as your beams do, in the same plane, so they travel as if they were one and the same. anything other than that and you will have bump steer. That's why there are drop pitman arms, to get the drag link and tie rods back into the same plane as the beams. The more parrallel to ground, the better.

Click to expand...

This is true, however a problem with that is that those pitman arms as provided rarely ever match up properly with the lift's height, and is why bumpsteer issues are so vividly prevalent on lifted TTBs.

Having a straight-across tierod like that on a TTB might actually be somewhat more livable than with the stock linkage on a mis-matched pitman arm, but it still would be very far from perfect (the only 'perfect' setup would be what's known as a "crossover" (swingset) setup, which tends to get pretty complex). However a very good compromise is the Stonecrusher steering linkage.
The Stonecrusher setup with it's longer tierod link isn't near as bothered by a mismatched pitman arm as the stock linkage would be, though too much mismatch and you'll still get some bumpsteer akin to what you'd have on a straightaxle when the draglink & panhard are not parallel (I would think up to a 2" disparity is easily tolerable with the SC linkage, which is what you typically have with a 4" TTB lift and a "normal" dropped pitman arm).

Do a search in the Offroad Suspensions section here, I remember there being some discussion there about the SC linkage.