As soon as I leave the Girlfriend's house, I need to head to the shop and get my drag link finalized and finished. So this is on my Model A. F-1 steering box. Hoop style steer arm on the spindle. Using the original rod ends off of the F-1 drag link, and lengthening it with some cold rolled 3/4" solid round stock. (COLD ROLLED is strong enough right?) There is no adjustment on this style draglink. Has anyone run into any problems when the suspension settles or anything similar? Or what about alignment issues? I don't have any updated pictures of my steering... So, this is the setup right here. NOT MY SETUP, BUT SIMILAR (picture courtesy of "Eyeball")
just try and keep the link as parallel as possible. Also the longer the link, the less bumpsteer you will have, but do not worry about that. People tend to dis this type of steering because of bumpsteer, but as long as you do not have a lot, say 6" or more, suspension travel it will be so minimal that the average driver will never notice and it will drive perfectly fine. 3/4" cold roll will be pleanty strong as well. Good luck, keep us posted!
Thanks Half Evil.. I dont have a perfectly ideal steering setup, but its damn close. The box is mounted on top of the frame, and my stock pitman arm is bent to clear the hairpins, so its maybe an inch shorter than stock. I'll post up a pic later... I'm more worried about not being able to set the toe.
Looks good. Bump steer is induced by the centerline of the pitman arm not being in the center of the radius rod. Yours looks real good from the photo and I'm sure you won't notice any minor wiggle. Imagine a line from your radius rod mounting point through the center of the axle end and put the center of the pitman arm on that and you will eliminate bump steer. Toe in is set on the tie rod and unaffected by the drag link position. Remember everything on an old Ford is a compromise to some extent.
That is not a pic of MY setup... Sorry about the confusion..just a similar setup. I understand toe in is set on the tie rod, but any difference in toe that is changed after i setup my drag link will throw it slightly off. (the distance from the draglink ball to the ball on the steering arm)
You won't be able to center the steering wheel. It may not matter to you but if the wheel is off center when you put it on, that is where it will have to stay. To get it close when you make the drag link, mount the wheel, count the turns lock to lock and return exactly half way. Then measure and fab the drag link. It may not end up perfect but it will be better than constantly having to look around a wheel spoke to see the gauges. If you use a 32 tie rod end like this one with threads on one end of your drag link then you can adjust the length of the rod and dial in the center of the steering wheel. You still need to get it close to start with and use the threaded end to get it exact.
To save a whole lot of guessing and generally incomplete advice,open this up and check how it should be done. Centering the steering wheel is possible by both centering the front wheels by adjusting both ends of the tie rod and the drag link adjustable ends and moving the pitman arm. http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/vehicle_regulation/bulletin/pdf/Street_COP_sec_4.pdf With drawing of suspensions here in section 5 http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/vehicle_regulation/bulletin/street_rod.aspx
The tie rod ends usually (on my Chevy, anyways) have left-hand threads on one side and right-hand on the other, enabling adjustment to increase or decrease length to center the steering wheel, as well as make toe-in & toe-out adjustment.
Getting everything "close" is about all i can do. My tie rod has adjustable tie rod ends, but my drag link does not.
To do an alignment on a modern factory engineered suspension, you center and lock the steering wheel in place first. Then you adjust the toe in. The factory designed the system this way and provided enough adjustment to set the toe with each wheel toe in adjusted independently from the other wheel keeping the steering wheel centered. If you try to do that with a one piece tie rod you could end up with a tie rod end barely threaded on one end and the other one screwed way on. With an adjustable drag link, you can set the toe with equidistant tie rod ends by using the left and right hand threads and then center the steering wheel the way it is supposed to be by adjusting the length of the drag link which won't change the toe in setting. When you start engineering your own parts You have to get them as close as possible when engineering them. Getting them perfect the first try is tough. Adding some adjustment in the drag link seems like a good idea to me. You can still get that adjustment with the old style tie rod ends. The tie rod in my picture above replaced the modern style sealed tie rod end that the car came with. I replaced it for the look. If you are using all the same year Ford parts on the same year Ford frame in the same Ford locations then the adjustable drag link isn't critical. My 32 coupe uses the stock 32 non adjustable drag link like your picture with a Deuce box on an original Deuce frame. My roadster uses a 56 F100 box with a custom made adjustable drag link.
The truck that my steering box came off of had no frontend so the drag link was cut off. I want to use the original steering arm and drag link end so this is what I did. I simply parted the end off square and threaded it to the standard 11/16".
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