Quote:
Originally Posted by maranelloboy05
I did notice that the freeplay is in the coupler. I could move it back and forth by hand while under the car with absolutely nothing happening internal to the box. Is that the normal freeplay?
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Yes. The steering shaft acts on the worm gear. The pitman arm is attached to the sector gear. The adjustment nut acts on the sector gear. No matter how tight it gets, it will have no effect on the slop present on the input shaft/worm gear.
The adjustment to the steering box is to help preload the sector gear to prevent excessive wandering and weaving due to the box being too loose and input slop from the steering wheel. When the box is adjusted too tight, you wind up with a different kind of wander/weave due to the box just staying wherever you turned it instead of self-centering and following the road contour. As I said, there's a fine line between too loose and too tight. Too loose is definitely better and safer than too tight.