I know I replaced it 20 years ago with the Help replacement, but I've heard they don't last long, I don't know when this one went bad, but it's been bad a long time. Has anyone ever fab'd up an aluminum or some other solid replacement? Would it be bad to try? I figure they are rubber to stop vibration/steering noises into the column, but I'm not too worried about that, I just want to cure the slack.
don't know if i would go...solid... my rack and pinion for my Mav. came with reg. u-joints. it had a little too much...road feel. I could feel every rock and joint in the road. i ordered a u-joint with a rubber block in it and now it's smooth...
I could be wrong but I don't think the shaft and the box line up exactly straight so it needs to have some flex kinda like a u joint..
ive welded in a u-joint out of a fox mustang steering shaft in place of the rag joint before. it worked really well.
the one and only thing I can tell you in regards to a rag joint is you dont want yours to split when your driving down a winding dark road doing 40mph through the woods buzzed.that sucked somethin feirce,i thought we were dead for sure
I had one in a 73 Ford Pickup that kept going bad, no sooner I would replace it, the damn thing would be tore up again. Finally found out that it was because the cab mounts were rotted out and the weight of the cab was resting on the sterring column. If you replace your "Rag Joint" with a stock part it should last a long time before going bad again unless there is something wrong causing abnormal stress on the steering colunm.
