Technical STEERING, How to build yourself a steering column cheap

Thanks for the great tech!!
Re the "post in the chest", wasn't that what the double D thing was for? Two shafts in a D'd sleeve joint with a gap between them? Think it only gave a coupla inches of crush. Had a 68 Olds (NON power assist) steering. Had that. I guess the wheel would just crack your sternum and stop your heart instead of skewering you. Oh well.

 

Pretty much...

IF ya can pull it off, from what I understand you want the column to break away and head down as apposed to up... crumple closer to ya at the bottom... not the top.

Havent the foggiest as to how ya achieve it... but alot of the late model cars (well not real late model...) run a rag joint between the box and the main shaft

 

Great post. There is one leetle thing that bothers me tho. Instead of turning out the oilite bushings, why not just buy cheap sealed bearings like the oem stuff?
I suppose ya prolly had the bushing material on hand, eh?

 

As for the breakaway column. If i remember correctly there a couple types. The older style uses a double d collumn with a large gap between the top inner shaft and bottom inner shaft. there was also a I think plastic pin throught the top shaft.

So when you hit the pin it shears and the colunm drops.

But once again you get what you paid for on this info.

Garth

 

of course safety is always a justifiable concern when designing and building a car from scratch.

but considering the type of car this collumn would go in I would think that design functionality deserves just as much if not more than equal considration.

the pure simplicity and solid nature of this collumn makes it appear very unlikely to fail.

it would be for example not only less likely to fail than the popular "suicide" front end it would also not be the cause of an accident.

we can make our cars safer by avoiding design failure.

Paul

 

Ya know , safety is alway top of the list.. I went for cheap cheap and hit on function.. The column cost me a total of 45 bucks.. I know I could have done cheaper but time was a issue.. Rocky, Oh the sealed bearing were gonna be used but at 11 bucks a crack Bronze was 4 bucks and had a greater surface on the shaft. I felt it was a bit too much for the seal ones. With time I could have found it cheaper and would have used it.. We use the bronze bearing alot in our machines, cheap easy and work great under normal loads. It also doesn't call for a hardend shaft as some bearing do.. Really the out side tube is just for looks, the old race cars looked to have a shaft and that's it.
thanks continental

 

btt