Thread: Bump steer.

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Originally posted by R Pope
Further thought--if there's room under the engine, you could bend the pitman and raise that end of the drag link.

I'll go along with R Pope on bending the pitman arm up to match the angle of the panhard.

Another way out is to get one of the flat aftermarket pitman arms that are a direct replacement for the Vega arm.
What's nice about these is, the pitman can remain flat and the draglink's tie rod end can go in from the top due to the double sided taper in the aftermarket pitman arms.

Be careful you don't end up with the pitman being one of the lowest front end components. Catch the pitman on one of those tall gas station manhole covers and it's gonna tear things up.

If you do heat and raise either the stock or aftermarket pitman be careful and do not elongate the holes at either end.

What will happen with a bent pitman is:

The steering ratio will be a touch slower - which means less steering effort.

The draglink will come back a little bit and no longer be perfectly parallel with the tie rod - as viewed from the top.
This doesn't hurt anything and the difference in angularity will be very small.
Getting the tie rod parallel with the panhard - as viewed from the front or rear - is the important part.

In fact you could wait until you actually drive the car before making changes.
You may not have the bump steer problem you think you have.

I have the same setup you have on my 32 except the aftermarket pitman is bent a bit.
Bump steer is not a problem.
Nor is shimmy.
With 6 degrees postive caster and 3/32" toe-in plugged in the car handles very well. (1/16" - 1/8" is the usual toe=in recommendation.)
Keeps up with sporty cars on the twisties.