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Woodward power steering project


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I called Woodward and talked to Tony, and that's what I ended up with. Cobramatt also has a Woodward rack in his crazy roadrace car. Not sure what process he went through to pick one, but I believe he has the same thing I do. Just looking at the catalog, it appears that the MR isn't made in a ratio as fast as I wanted, and I remember talking to Tony about the 13" wide front wheels and autoxing and he thought I needed the high load rack because of the stresses.

 

I'm not seeing a real clear description of how it mounts, but I think it's going to be similar. My real problem was that I was trying to move the rack as far back as possible which was going to cause issues with the crank pulley and I had my mounting tube in the wrong orientation. Once I figured that out it wasn't that bad, just one of those measure 47 times, weld once sorts of deals.

Edited by JMortensen
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Wondering where the extra loading on the rack comes from with wider front wheels / tires. As the spindle turns, a wider tire would have the effect of lifting the suspension / chassis more than a narrower one and therefore more resistance to turning? More amplified with camber and caster?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got the linkage and everything done, so yay for that. Turns out the steering shaft fit without having to notch the frame rail. Steering linkage is all done. Still need to mount the ps pump and get hoses made for it, and do a quick release for the wheel, but the hard stuff is done.

 

Then went to bolt up the sway bar. Boo. Turns out the hydraulic cylinder hits the bar when I turn right. Will have to relocate the sway bar mount forward and lengthen the arms which will make the bar weaker. Shouldn't be too hard. I have the sway attached to a rod end, so I made a new tube to weld through the frame with a nut on the end to thread the rod end into.

 

The end of the bar also hit my droop limiters, so will probably figure a way to limit droop with the sway bar as well. Got a bar from a 280Z that I bought earlier this year, so I'll have 2 bars to fit up and make work.

 

On the plus side, looks like this setup gives a lot of room for exhaust.

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Edited by JMortensen
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Maybe you can come watch it autox next year. You might even get a ride if I get around to putting a passenger seat in it (planning on it but don't have a 2nd seat yet and have a lot more stuff to buy, so it's down the list a ways).

 

So here's the update on the sway bar(s). I got the stock 280 bar modded and had to cut the ends off of my old 1" bar to make it fit in the new location also. Serious PITA. Got it all in and checked for clearances. This diamond wheel is really the wrong offset. It's 3.75" offset and should be more like 4". Still there is about 5/8" of space between the wheel and the tire. I think that will be OK because the tires will be pretty narrow for the wheel width, 13" tread on a 14" wheel, so I don't think the sidewall will pooch out too far. If it does I may have to add rack limiters or wheel spacers. Hoping that it clears with no more hassle. 

 

In getting the thing all together I realized that my brand new inner tie rod on the LH side is loose and has about 1/8" slop in it. That's not cool. Have to check with Woodward and see if they'll help me out or if I just need to buy another one.

 

The suspension is sitting on the bumpstops in the pics. You can see how little ground clearance there is going to be. I might actually have to run a longer external bumpstop to keep the splitter off the ground. We'll see. 

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