Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
(OP)
I need help finding a product. I am building a LandSpeed racer for the Bonneville Salt Flats. I'm putting a SBF NASCAR engine in a '86 Merkur XR4TI. The headers take up all the room in the engine compartment and I have no room for the steering shaft. Someone came in our store and said there was a company that makes a flexible steering shaft (this would solve my problem). Does anyone know where I can find such an animal? Thanks,
Bob Gribble
Bob Gribble





RE: Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
I don't think they are precise enough for a street car, but if you only need a very poor turning circle, you might set the leverage in the linkage to give good precision
Regards
pat
RE: Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
I get the impression he was hoping for a torsionally stiff, flexible cable, like a speedo drive. I doubt that such a cable capable of providing steering loads would be low friction, and if it was the backlash would be too much.
Cheers
Greg Locock
RE: Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
Indeed, most sanctioning bodies forbid any flexible "cable" type of shaft. I would look to multiple short shafts, and Borgeson (SP?) joints, then modify the headers as necessary. Hey, we stuffed a 460 BBF in a Ranger, you should have seen that mess!
RE: Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
I am presumeing that a Bonneville racer has a lot of room, and mainly needs to be kept going straight at high speed. I would expect the car to have a bunch of castor, like at least 6 degrees and possible as much as 15 degrees. This would keep it pretty straight with no steering wheel at all.
The boat steering I am thinking of is called a ride guide. It has a steering wheel with a curved rack and a pinion gear. This pushes or pulls a very hefty Bowden type cable. On faster boats they use twin Ride Guides, so one is always pulling. This also allows adjustment of each cable with some preload to pull the slack out of the other cable, thereby considerably improving accuracy. These can also be had with power assist, which are then typically used on large sterndrive units for offshore racers. In raceing applications, stern drives are mounted high on the transome to allow the propellor to surface, there is a considerable torque on the steering from the paddlewheel effect of the surfacing propellor, thus makeing power assist necessary.
I would be takeing a close look at what someone like Mercury Marine has to offer on their Mercrusier range.
Regards
pat
RE: Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft
RE: Help needed on Flexible Steering Shaft