WARVET said:
Can you give me any info on the difficulty and time for the project? Any tips or tricks?
Asketh and ye shall receiveth. Here's the reply I sent to VB&P about the installation. Note, that this is specific to my car. It may be different under the hood of a '75, however, we both have smallblocks so it might be the same.
-= Andre =-
Notes Regarding the Steeroids package for my 1980:
1) The hollow aluminum tube that connects between the
u-joints is supposed to be notched so the setscrews
seat into it. It was not notched on either end. This
required EVER SO CAREFULLY getting a drill in there to
notch the tube when everything was already in place.
This is a very cramped job and not very easy to do
once everything is lined up and in place!
Additionally, with that tube being so light, too much
pressure on the drill and you'll drill right through
the surface.
2) The pressure hose is almost exactly 3" too long.
Between the sharp angle on the hose connector and the
rigidity of the hose, it is essentially impossible to
mount due to it getting in the way of the A-arm
travel. As soon as the car would be down on the
ground, it would hit the hose and likely break it off
or do critical damage to the fitting on the pump. I
had to go out and have a custom high pressure hose
made, along with fittings of the proper size and angle.
3) I took a die grinder and had to notch the frame in
order to have the lowest setscrew (u-joint on the
rack) have clearance for a full rotation.
4) There were extra washers supplied, however they
were the smaller, incorrect size. Unfortunately, at
this time, I don't recall the exact washers needed or
on which parts they were on. I know it was towards
the end of the installation.
5) It seems kinda silly that the tierod sleeves aren't
shaved on both ends for wrenching/adjusting. They
only have the wrench flats on one side, which adds to
the difficulty of adjusting either the inner or outer,
depending if you have them on the inside or outside.
6) The gusset bracket DEFINITELY needs to have some
manual intervention on the part of the enduser.
Although it's nice that they put the extra piece of
steel to align with the frame, it has to be
significantly grinded/filed down so it gives a
seemless mating surface with the frame. This requires
a lot of 'check for fit...shave it...check for
fit...shave it'. Then, to keep it from rusting, we
coated it with rustproofer. This [shaving] is a critical part
that was more or less unmentioned in the
documentation. That bracket is what bears the load of
the pressure on the frame from the rack. If that's
not flush with the frame, eventually you are going to
have wear and slop in the system, and worst case
scenario it will break. Years ago, this actually
occured with my OEM setup I had. The frame itself
actually tore with the bracket still attached, which
caused the pump piston to snap over a bumpy corner.
7) The drivers side bracket which holds the steering
shaft support bearing... If that tab that carries the
support bearing was rounded off instead of being
squared on the ends, it would make the adjustment of
the pinch nuts way way easier, not to mention less
dangerous because of the sharp corners. When
wrenching down on those nuts, the amount of
turn/leverage that you can get from a wrench big
enough to fit them is damn near zero, due to space
constraints.
Having the edges rounded off on that tab would not
incur any loss of rigidity or supporting strength.
...That's all I can think of right now. If you want
pictures, I suppose I could supply some.
)
