I
finally figured out what was wrong with the steering on this car. That's the good news. The bad is that I ended up replacing some painful parts that were not the problem since my last update.
So, to cut to the chase, it was the differential mount. Ba-dum-bump.
Long story:
Last summer, thinking the problem still was up in the front end, I replaced the LCA bushings and lower ball joints. Even though that (now removed) Wade Products air filter setup was venting the blowby in front of the passenger LCA bushing, and it had degraded as a result, they were both in find condition. So new ones were not really needed. As long as I was in that far, and because I have no service records, and because they might have been the cause of my problems too, I also replaced the lower ball joints. I cut one open and it was perfect inside with no signs of wear. So
that wasn't the problem either. My conclusion was that the problem was not in the front end -- there being pretty much nothing left to replace up there
-- so, if not the front, it must be the back.
For lack of anything better to try, and because I knew the diff mount needed replacing (the back ended lifted up quite a bit when put into reverse), I went ahead and replaced it first. I didn't think it could be causing the remaining steering problems, but apparently it was.
Now the car doesn't follow the ruts, and I don't feel like sometimes it might possibly be briefly going down the road a little sideways, and I don't feel like I have to devote 110% of my attention to keeping it in the lane on the freeway. On the freeway, I can actually afford my attention to wander from steering for the fraction of a second it takes to check the speedometer, or the temperature, or the oil pressure. Hurrah!
I'll post pictures of the whole trivial replacement in a bit (perhaps in another thread), but here's a picture of the new and old mounts side by side:
The old mount doesn't look that bad, but oh what a difference.
Thanks for all the help I got here from all of you
.