Technical Cowl steering in a 32 Ford with an F150 box

Yep, like unicorn shit. It's just not possible for such a video to exist........

Is there a way we can swap a thousand swingin' dick big hairy male egos just to get Pete back?
Seems like a good trade to me.....

 

44 years ago, I installed parallel springs under the front of an early Bronco for a buddy, and found it difficult to get a flat angle with the steering rod to the right front arm. When I took it for a test drive, and stepped on the gas, it would head for one ditch, step on the brake, and head for the other. So, I put some wood blocks between the frame and axle, and bound it down with chains. It drove like a dream, but rode rough ! My first experience with torque and bump steer. I have a new Vic Irvan bump steer/toe change gauge with dial indicators, that will tell the real story on front end geometry.

 

Can anyone please post up some pics of cars built in the 40's, 50's and 60's that use cowl steering.
I am having trouble finding images of these "traditional" cowl steering cars.
Street cars is what we are after. Some race cars did use cowl steering, but pics of street cars are hard to find.....

 

The most famous of all. Doan Spencer.

 

My point is that cowl steering was not "traditional" or even that common in the early cars.
Yes, the Doane Spencer roadster did have it, but that doesn't change the fact that it is geometrically unsound.
Below is a post by @Pete Eastwood from his cowl steering thread.......

Interesting early pic from 1949 of how Doane had the steering. Looks like it would have worked fine.......

 

I’ve had the argument before on the HAMB about certain modifications being traditional or not. Been called out that if it was done only once, it still counts.

I think the Spencer roadster is the reason we all love the look of cowl steering. Bump steer be damned, it sure looks cool.

 

and this..........

 

If I remember right Bruce Meyer and his wife drove the cowl steered 3 window Larry deuce coupe from LA to the BC deuce days and back a few years ago?

 

And the Kraft roadster makes it a pattern. Traditional yet?

 

So, it's got Vega style box mounted now? I've got a Vega cross steer set up in my '29 on '32 rails, box under the engine mount, two U-joint gets the shaft around the DeSoto Hemi. It drives GREAT. I can't see how it'd be impossible to get a steering shaft to the box. Kids used cowl steering on their hot rods to imitate race cars 70-80 years ago, there's no reason to use it today. (edit) My steering colomn isn't at a goofy angle, although I could have lowered the bottom mount for a little more clearance at the engine, I didn't want the wheel above the windshield.

 

If the vintage track roadsters are considered traditional it might be of at least passing interest (pun intended) to see some cowl steering in that regard from the days of old.

 

@deucepickup32
I warned you Roger! Lol
As I mentioned, as long as your drag link and wishbones are in the same arc you will be fine. They Shouldn’t be parallel!

 

When I set the Schroeder gear up in my friends T I did set the drag link parallel with the axle links, but that was for aesthetic purposes, that will do nothing for making it perform better.

You have to keep in mind that the cowl steering is not the same as a 4 bar suspension set up with parallel links. On a 4 bar the end links are attached to points on the chassis that only have one point of movement on each side of the bars, the bushed ends.

On a cowl steering car your drag link is attached to points with 2 points of movement on each end, the spindle which which rotates on the king pin (point 1) and one tie rod (point 2). The other side is the pitman arm on a rotating sector shaft (point 1) and its accompanying tie rod (point 2). So now when your arcs of travel start to not match each other, something will give to compensate for the arc mismatch and it will either be the spindle turning on the kingpin or the sector shaft will rotate causing the steering wheel to move and that is where the bump steer happens.

On the above mentioned T, it did indeed have movement at the steering wheel when the front suspension was jounced. That being said, it's still a very light car with maybe 1.5" of suspension travel even with the little Dodge HEMI in it, driving it was manageable even at 85 MPH on the freeway, on a heavier vehicle with more suspension travel it would be a huge problem with a very real potential to lose control.

Long story short, most cowl setups will have bump steer if the pitman arm tie rod is not near the original side steer plane, each individual setup will have different degrees of bump steer it's just that your severity of it will vary depending on a whole host of factors beyond simple geometry. To say it can be eliminated entirely by some magical setup is silly.

 

There are three things that will help this geometry.
#1 the spindle end of the drag link needs to mount ahead of the axle like an original spindle.
#2 the drag link and hair pin cannot be parallel!
#3 the wishbone or hair pin needs to be much longer than the drag link.

this is not a parallelogram, it’s two similar arcs with a single center point. The closer you can get to that the less bump steer you will have.

 

24 inch radius rod seems kind of short, my split wishbone is in the neighborhood of 36 inches which would put travel in a 6 inch arc. if your hot rod is bouncing down the road with that much travel, you have bigger problems than bump steer

 

Cowl steering is generally viewed as being a glaring example of poor engineering BUT ... cowl steering CAN be made to work extremely well and the solution is relatively simple but very seldom if ever utilized.

Here is the trick ... when wanting the pitman arm to protrude roughly through the middle of the cowl, the builder simply needs to channel the frame (raise the frame up into the car) approximately 1 to 1 1/2 feet. Some slight issues may include the inability to install any seats or possibly even prevent a driver or passenger entering the car but hey ... with cool looks sometimes concessions must be taken. In order to gain enough room for people after this extreme channel, you could "reverse chop" the top (raise the roof) approx 1 to 1 1/2 feet to compensate.

 

While not cowl steering , some people can even get side steering horribly wrong, okay we will bend the drag link to get rid of the bump steer. Oh well that didn’t work.

 

Here is the link to Pete and Jakes catalog:
https://www.peteandjakes.com/catalog-download/

Near the front of the catalog is Jake's article on how to correctly engineer cowl steering.
Just read it.

 

‍♂️‍♂️‍♂️‍♂️

 

Strangely, early pics of this car show that it also wasn't originally built with cowl steering......
Maybe a few tried it purely for looks, but most knew better.

 

Settle this NOW. Cowl steering guys, post a video of your car sitting on the pavement and jump up and down on the spreader bar while showing the steering wheel. Lets see how much the steering wheel moves back and forth. Mark Morarity asked for this and no takers. Why is that? Because you know the steering wheel will whip back and forth! That's called bump steer. If the steering wheel doesn't move backing forth the suspension is not moving up and down. I DARE YOU TO POST A VIDEO.

 

I DARE YOU TO POST A VIDEO. What is this fucking High School?

My 34 is still under construction, but as soon as I can I'll shoot a video.

 

Down under with a new build bump steer is one of the many things they look for, not exactly sure what the maximum criteria is , but if you are over the limit of what is acceptable. Back to the drawing board and start again ,as it should be. Doing a coil over setup is involved process but the coils and shocks must be removed and a zillion measurements taken. Don’t know how they do an I beam?.

 

Not exactly sure what you mean Roger?

 

Bump steer is needed to keep us old guys awake while roadstering around town.

 

Is the geometry correct? No. Does it become an issue with the limited travel of early style suspension? Not in my experience.
My A sedan came to me fitted with cowl steering using a shroeder 8-1 ratio box so I had to work with it.. If you jumped up and down on the front then yes the steering wheel would move but I never experienced any sort of bump steer in the real world.

The ratio though did mean that steering was very heavy, particularly for smaller UK roads.
We took ideas from the rolling bones cars and dropped the box while raising the steering arm at the spindle to get the drag link parallel which improved things a lot.
In this guise I used the car extensively on the road, at the drags, at hill climbs and running over 100mph at Pendine.



The steering always felt very planted and never suffered any bump steer but the heaviness was still an issue so I stumped up the cash and bought a converted F100 box from Mikes speed shop. With a 16-1 ratio the car became a bunch easier to live with on a day to day basis and didn't lose too much of it's 'directness' on the track. I even road tripped it through Europe and continued to hill climb in it.




As I said I know the geometry is wrong but it can work just as the rolling bones, hilton hot rods and many more have proven. The funny thing is, despite the fun I had in that car, I don't think I would run cowl steering again. My 32 is being built with a vega cross steer set up so it will be interesting to see how that performs.

 

You'll find that most of those early racers had the bones or hairpins mounted a lot higher on the car than is the case on a typical hot rod.

 

Either do I Matt

 

Lots of great info and tech talk, thanks