In spite ot it's many golden qualities, My '69 Dart has always handled very un-predictably. It corners fine around town. Int he road it gets to feeling squirly. Going into a turn you feel very little resistance to the turn through the steering wheel. In fact, it almost feels like the steering wheel wants to get ahead of you and pull into a tighter curve. It has what should be the best of everything on it, good tires, front sway bar, new steering box, fresh rebuild on the front end, and specs out with 2.5* positive caster on the alignment, and yet there is barely any road feel. The body has been checked out to be square, and the rear wheels track correctly according to the alignment shop, yet it seems to want to wander when tracking down the highway. It steers like it has NEGATIVE caster, and too much toe.
What the HECK gives here? Here are some other pertinent facts: It has after marked alloy rims, 15X7 with a 3 3/4" back space, good Michlin 205/65/15 tires, stock mopar sway bar. The front end is lightened considerably by moving the battery to the trunk, and fiber glass hood and fenders. One detail that may be a key to the problem, even though the idler arm is new, it has a little wiggle in it up and down. I don't know exactly how much, but probably about 1/8" to 1/4". It came from Napa, and it's design doesn;t fill the space between the mounting tabs completely. The gap is filled by a tube installed into the arm.
I am feeling officially desperate here. I need the help of you geniuses out there. Why does this pig wallow in the mud so bad? Thanks!

Got power steering? Those are notoriously wet noodle/no road feel. Is there play in the sector shaft? Sounds like maybe it's toe'd out a bit. How about the caster, where's it? On the idler, I'd put a washer in there to make up the space if you haven't already, I'm not clear on your description of that. I didn't do all the math on your backspacing/rim width, but perhaps the front track is significantly off of design spec and throwing the geometry off a bit as well.

"DW"

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If it ain't broke, fix it!

Thanks Dennis. This is the kind of thinking I am hoping will get generated here. The specs on the alignment toe are 1/8* toe, 2.5* positive caster, and 1/2* camber tipped in at the top(is that negative?). It should drive nicely, and my 360 Dart set up exactly the same way feels great driving down the road.

Here is my definition of a nice feeling car: It should track down the road straight, hands off the wheel, it should corner fairly flat, and neutrally with ample warning for breakaway, the steering wheel should try to pull back straight while in a corner. This car does the flat corner thing OK, but nothing else. You have to really pay attention when you drive it, or you will find yourself out of your lane and in trouble. It drove better with the old sloppy, worn out stearing box, and 15" cop car wheels. Oh yeah, it has new rear springs and new gas shocks all around.

Money is not an issue here. I will do what ever it takes to improve her. I am thinking of the following:1. new torsion bars: it has the old /6 bars. 2.Upgrade the sway bar with aftermarket bar. To be fair, I did take the 'good' bar off the slant and traded it for the factory bar on my 360 car, so downgrading the sway bar might be part of it's problem. I also removed the rear sway bar, thinking it might be a part of the problem. It didn;t week to change much. 3. Install Magnum Force upper control arms, for the purpose of increasing castor. Mercedes' front end specs cal for 6-7* of positive caster, and those cars are designed for serious high speed driving. I read the post where AndyF seriously dissed the Magnum force arms, and wondered why. Any experience out there with these? The addition of a new bump stop doesn't bother me in the slightest. As a last resort I would change the steering box. That is a bear of a job, so hope other things are the problem. I actually have looked at this front end with the idea of converting to rack and pinion. Curiously enough, though, the new Chrysler Cross Fire has a recirculating ball steering box, and that is a Mercedes design part. They still believe in these old recirculating ball design boxes.

What should my first step be? Maybe the torsion bars? But if I am going to change the torsion bars, that would be the time to install new upper control arms. Maybe start with fixing the idler arm. Toe in changes when that flexes. I need a plan, and some input and discussion will help me get a plan. It was far easier to put the Ford T-5 in this car than to get it to drive well. Thanks again.

Vader,

The first thing I would do is swap on a set of 4.25" backspace wheels and see how it feels. An easy experiment, and yes, you have changed the front track with quite a bit with discs and 3.75" BS wheels. This can affect road feel. Do you have the problem solver UCA bushings in there? It certainly sounds like you could use more caster, and those will give you at least 3-4 degrees, which is fine with PS.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

There you go. Lou da man on handling.

One thought, though: Have you changed or adjusted the steering box already? You made reference to the handling being better with the "old sloppy, worn out steering box". It is possible to have the sector shaft mesh too tight, which will present itself in a lack of return to center when you let go of the wheel. I like as much caster as I can get away with and still have both sides equal. 1/8" seems like a lot of toe to me, by the way. I like about 1/16 on a good tight front end. The point is to get everything pointing at zero when you get rolling down the road and all the bushings and joints are compressed. Jack the front wheels off the ground, crank it up and run the steering through, lock to lock and see how it feels. There should be very little resistance, and it should not steer itself one way or the other. If it does the latter, you would need to adjust the valve body on top of the steering box.

Well, it was more than one thought, wasn't it?

"DW"

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If it ain't broke, fix it!

Let's see if I can remember everything here. I have installed problem solver upper control arm bushings. It was the first thing I did to the car 11 years ago, and installed the same type in the upper control arms when I switched to disk brakes. I guess it would be really easy to swap the wheels on my two Darts, and see if that made any difference in either of them. What is the back spacing on your after market wheels Lou.

Dennis, I think I have done things correctly on the steering column and coupling, but maybe you should enlighten me a bit. Here are some things I did do: I pulled the entire column up slightly after it bottomed out in the coupling to be sure it wasn't touching and binding in the bottom of the coupling. I wiggled the front end of the column around before tightening it down on the firewall to make sure there was no lateral bind there. I am not 100% sure everything was as free once the bolts were tightened as they were before the bolts were tightened down. It seemed to be the best I could do, but maybe there are some tricks to improving that. Can you shim the gear box to improve alignment with the column? I have played endlessly with the adjustment of the valve housing. It is extemely sensitive, and the slightest tap seems to alter it alot. I could go back and play with that a bit more. I am told that with the wheels off the ground, when you start the car up, if it is out of adjustment, the steering wheel will make a slight jerk to one side upon initial start up. I haven't run that test with the wheels off the ground, but with the car at rest on the ground it does pass that test. Any tricks here for greater precision? I wish there were a thumb screw to adjust this. Still looking for feed back on the Magnum Force upper control arms. Good? Bad? OK? Great? Too expensive? Cool looking? Didn;t help handling? Made it drive like a Porche? Made it handle like a pig? What?

Lou, how bout the torsion bar? What size should I have on this car? You have seen it, and know it a little. I don't want it so stiff it can;t handle mild washboard pavement, but I do want it to drive better. Maybe this is too much for one thread. I know handling isn't as interesting as breather caps, but maybe we can get a few more reponses. Thanks guys!

DV,

What I was refering to was the sector shaft adjustment which is forward and inboard on the upper side of the box. It is held by a locknut and usually has a tag underneath the nut. The mesh can be too loose or too tight.

I would definitely get those wheels off the ground to do the valve body adjustment. That's really the only way you can do it right. And yes, it is very sensitive... I torque the nuts down just enough to hold the valve body from moving on its own. Then I use a small soft-faced mallot to gently tap it one way or the other until there is no tendency for the unit to self steer one way or the other. It takes some patience. This adjustment could be a large part of your problem.

"DW"

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If it ain't broke, fix it!

Thanks Dennis. I did play with the shaft sector adjustment some. I now think the box was bushed too tight when it was rebuilt, and the shaft was simply "too tight". At that time, I tried to free it up witht his adjustment, to no avail,and hence sort of lost a baseline adjustment. Now, the box had freed up some with use, so maybe I should go back and work that some more. Do you have any tips for getting that right?

Still looking for recommendations for torsion bar sizes. Are the 340 bars too stiff for a lightened up slant? I see Mancini has them advertized for $134, but they don;t state if that is per pair or each. You would think it would be per pair,since you shouldn't change just one torsion bar, ever.

Vader,

The '64 wheels are 16X8, 5.72" backspace (same as 5.22 on 7" wheel) on the 11.75" front rotors and with a 11/16" wheels spacer (still centered by hubs though). So for my 8" wheels, 5.05" is the effective backspace, and it would be 4.55" for 7" wheels. Factory Chrysler spec is 4.25" for 7" rims, and I have run these before too with 225/50-15s, as well as 3.75" backspace 15X7 rims with the same tires. Steering was fine in all cases.

Power steering - ugh.

The 340 bars will definitely not be too stiff, and you could probably go with the 0.890s. I have the 0.920s in my '64 and it is lighter than your car and you know how that rides - a little stiff, but not too bad.

AndyF wrote an article for Mopar Action a while back that stated (if memory serves here) that if Chrysler were designing a Dart today, they would have used a 0.890 bar to match wheel rates common on today's cars.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Thanks Lou. I wil lorder the .890 bars. My specs show .850 for the 340 cars. Still looking for feed back on the Magnum force control arms. Anybody? How 'bout you Andy? What don't you like about them? It's raining here now, and is supposed to for a couple of days more, so I will put off the wheel swap till the weather clears up. I'll keep you up to date as to the effect of that swap. So you think I wouldn't hate this car around town with manual steering? The last car I had with manual steering was my old "69 Maverick. That car handled well, but hated parking lots. How fast do you have to get going before your cars steer OK?

I have a set of the 0.870" torsion bars in my Dart. My impression is that they're a bit softer than the springs in many modern "sporty" cars. The front end is a lot less prone to bottoming out with them, and I'd definitely recommend them for a street cruiser. But you can add stiffer bars without making a car too harsh for the street.

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"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

Maybe you have an undetected part failure. Something basic but overlooked.
I know someone that had steering problems when he ran slicks at the track. The steering went away when leaving the line. He hit the wall with the cars right side. He repaired the body and then rebuilt the front end after finding some worn parts. He tested on the street with street tires and all was OK. Back to the track with slicks and in first gear it went to the wall and the steering would not work, more body damage. After relooking everything over, he found the steering shaft was pulling out of the pot coupler when the body flexed from the hard hook with the slicks.
Someone on another board had some handling problems, found the lower control arm mount was broken.
Maybe pulling the T-bars out with the car on jack stands and running the suspesion thru it's travel with a floor jack and see if you can spot something unusual or binding.

Cecil

Vader,

I have heard sketchy things about the Magnum Force UCAs, but have no personal experience. The bigblockdart.com guy makes a set that people say is better, is a bolt it, and is the same price or cheaper.

On my '68 Dart, my steering is a little tough under 5 mph, but the box is 200k miles and I think that has caused it to get worse of the years. I will be swapping in a new box this winter and I'll let you know how that goes. I assume you would agree that my '64 was pretty easy to steer at parking speeds even with the 245 tires and such. Narrower tires will make steering easier.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Thanks to one and all. I feel bad for your buddy who wrecked his car several times. What a way to learn. Especially when you think you have done everything right!

I now feel energized to get back in there and tinker. I did play with the valve position last night and it seems to return to center more evenly both sides, but feels more numb in the center. When it was off just a little, it was steering to the left just enough to take out the numb center feeling, since you had to steer it slightly to the right all the time. It made it feel really wierd in a left a hand turn, as all road feel disappeared. This thread actually made me much more aware of the details of it's handling, and thus better able to analyse what I don't like about it. I had just put up with it for about a year, and finally got fed up with the disfunctional nature of it.

I now think the box itself is just still too tight. I could not spin the input shaft by hand when the box was new out of the box. I had about three old ones, that spun easily, but I figured they were worn out. Now I think they were just broken in nicely.

I wonder if Bigblockdart.com's part increases the caster. I am really looking for that. Manual steering must be lighter by a bunch.

Just went on line to Bigblockdart.com, and was pretty impressed with the stuff there, both tech and for sale. It looks like the tubular A arms they sell are really the ticket. I will order those, and the .890 bars, and put them both on at the same time. I suspect this will help things a bunch. I also plan to get the larger sway bar and put it on. Thanks again to all.