Car Craft – November 2019

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➔SOURCES

ididit; 517-424-0577; ididit.com

Speed Direct; 888/425-2776;

SpeedDirect.com

it together under the car. The center

tie-rod bracket is bolted to the rack

with a pair of 17mm metric bolts and

Nord-Lock washers, which provide ten-

sion on the bolt to prevent them from

loosening. The bolts also get a dose of

high-strength thread locker. Take no

chances when it comes to steering

components. The tie-rod ends are

Heim-joint style, and there is a left- and

righthand thread unit for each side.

This allows you to adjust the toe of the

wheels without removing anything.

The joints are Teflon-lined, so you don’t

have to worry about greasing them.

They are secured to the center bracket

with metric bolts and red thread locker.

The tie-rod bracket bolts are torqued to

80 ft-lb.

Using the original steering system,

pull the tie rods straight so that the

entire linkage system is in a straight

line. Take a measurement from center

to the center of the tie-rod taper shafts

(the part that goes into the steering

arm on the spindle). This is the base

length for your system. Take this mea-

surement to the new system and

adjust the tie rods to match this. Make

sure you adjust each side the same

amount: If you thread in the left side

five turns, the right side must also be

threaded in five turns. Otherwise, you

will end up with an off-center rack, and

your car will not behave properly.

From here, the system goes together

quickly, the exception is the steering

column. We converted our column to

use the factory Mustang upper and

lower mounts. The column came with a

set a lower support mounts and a pair

of half-moon spacers so you can use

the factory firewall support. The upper

mount is a clamshell that unbolts from

the factory ’69 column, and we put it

onto the new one. The key to getting

this system to work without any bind-

ing is to pull the column as far into the

car as possible (with the U-joints con-

nected to the rack), with a slight angle

toward the driver door. This reduces the

angle on the upper U-joint so it doesn’t

bind. The entire install process took less

than six hours and would ultimately

depend on the level of rust you have to

deal with on your old parts. On the

ground with jackstands, it might take

an hour longer.

10. Under the car, we installed
    the driver-side bracket, which
    uses the power steering
    ram mounting holes. The
    gearbox holes are unused. The
    passenger-side bracket mounts
    in the idler arm location. 10


11. Next, the rack assembly was positioned
    in the car and bolted down. You want to
    test-fit everything at this point before
    adding thread locker (rack-to-bracket
    bolts) in case you have an interference.
    Sometimes the hard lines have to be
    adjusted.

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12. The tie-rod taper pins were installed
    and torqued to spec, then the outer rod
    ends attached. There are three spacers that
    go on the pin—these are used to adjust the
    tie-rod arms up or down to match the angle
    of the lower control arm, as shown. This
    one needs to be lowered using the thinnest
    spacer. This is done with the weight of the
    vehicle on the suspension.

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13. We reused the upper column mount,
    bolting it to the column in the approximate
    location as the original, which is 13 inches
    from the end of the steering wheel shaft.
    Then the column was reinstalled in the car.
    The lower mount was also reused.

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14. The U-joint assembly was connected,
    keeping the upper and lower joints in phase
    as shown. One or two teeth off is OK if you
    need to adjust for a binding issue. Now it is
    off to the alignment shop!

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42 CAR CRAFT NOVEMBER 2019