Steering wheel upside down

[Steve Kirk]

I fitted a removable steering wheel upper column/boss to my car a while back. One glitch is that the wheel is now upside down when going straight ahead. A bit annoying, but as I could see no way to sort it out at the time without dismantling the whole linkage down to the rack (which is all pretty inaccessible in my car without sticking it on a ramp), I put it off until "later" and it is becoming a feature. However it does obscure the instruments/warning lights more than usual so should be fixed.

 

Before I set to it and take the whole thing apart, can anyone tell me if it is actually possible to achieve this 180 degree shift? Or do I just have the wrong upper column? (It is from Caterham).

[Joe 90]

Steve,

Yes you can fix it You only need to undo the splined joint at the steering rack, although you may have to loosen the sliding joint at the top of the column. It may take a couple of goes to get the splines exactly right, and it really helps to park the car absolutely straight before you start.

 

Starting all over at 40.

[Steve Kirk]

Thanks Oliver. One question though, does that splined shaft on the rack have a "key" on it, like the other splined shafts higher up the column do? These keys are what stopped me from rotating the other shafts by 180 degrees to solve the problem.

 

Or, is the shaft on the rack different, and you can align the splines with more precise control?

 

Does anyone else know for sure that there is only one type of removable column?

[scooby dooby doo]

if the car is widetrack you can line up your eye using a rear wheel to see where on the front tyre it lines up. check on each side and you can get it very accurately to straight ahead.

 

HOOPY

R706KGU Hoopylight R

[Peter Carmichael]

There have been two designs of lower steering column. One had a key and you could not change the alignment. The more recent ones don't have a key. I think they are interchangeable.

[Joe 90]

There's always somewhere to make an adjustment. On my car one side of the UJ is keyed, the other isn't.

 

Starting all over at 40.

[Steve Kirk]

Hmmmmmmm

 

I took the upper and lower columns out when I had the engine out. Not normally required I know, but the VXi has a lot of guff around the inlet side to contend with, and it's v tight. I looked at the UJ then, and I _think_ it was keyed on both the upper and lower sides. [i should have sorted it then of course, but we were in a rush to replace the gearbox at the time.....]

 

I think I'll call Caterham tomorrow to ask about this. I need to work out if the splined shaft on the rack and the corresponding end of the UJ have keys, and/or whether the 2 types of lower shafts are interchangeable as Peter suggests. Or maybe there are more than one type of UJ, rack and column, some keyed and some not.....?

 

Thanks all for your help I'll let you know what I find out.

[Chelspeed]

The universal joint (UJ) where the column joins the rack has two splined joints, UJ to rack and UJ to column. The UJ to column spline can only go on one way as the groove in the splined area of the column that the securing bolt slides through is just that, a groove in one place. The UJ can fit onto the rack spline any way you like as there is a necked down area in the rack spline all the way round so whichever way the UJ is fitted there is space for the securing bolt to fit.

 

So you need to park the car with the wheels traight ahead, loosen the clamp up by the pedal box so that the column can slide a bit, remove the UJ from the rack, turn the steering wheel straight and then refit the UJ on the rack.

[Dannyboy]

I had the same problem when i first fitted my steering wheel, found that the upper and lower UJ had a Key, the bolt tightening the UJ fits through a machined 'divot' on the steering column, thereby not allowing any adjustment..

 

However, my steering wheel was not 180 degrees out!

 

cheesy geezer 😬