Steering Wheel Off Center! Ouch!

[SLang]

This weekend I tried to put my truck in a place it did not belong at a high rate of vibration... In real terms I hit a sidewalk at 60 MPH. This busted a ball joint and knocked the truck out of alignment. After the repair and alignment, the steering wheel is about 1/4 turn off from center when the wheels are straight. The guy that did the alignment said the tierod lengths on both sides are with in spec. Meaning he did not adjust one tierod long and the other short because he was lazy.



He mentioned that the gear in the steering box probably jumped one tooth. This sound funny to me. If it is indeed a gear, to jump a tooth it would break that tooth. I've never been in one of these so I may be thinking of it wrong. Any ideas? Comments?



On my brother 98 WS6 Trans Am, it has a steering wheel clutch. If you hit a sidewalk and have a firm grip on the steering wheel, the clutch slips and the steering wheel and tires are no longer aligned. But your rists are in one piece. Do we have this mechaniam on our trucks?

 

[Dieselnerd]

You don't say if you have a 2 or 4 wheel drive although from some of your description it does sound like a 2WD. On the four wheeler you can easily adjust the drag link to center the wheel. Looking at my service manual it looks like you have to shorten 1 tie rod and lengthen the other on the 2WD. If you are careful and don't turn one tie rod more than the other, I think it would be pretty easy to center the wheel. As far as "Jumping a tooth", in my mind it sounds like BS. The Dodge uses a recirculating ball type gear. I don't see how that could happen without breaking something but I've been wrong before. I am not aware of any type of clutch in the steering that slips when you hit something and can find no reference to one in the service manual. To check if you are really off a tooth, center the wheel, (probably need to run the motor unless you are really strong) then see if it takes exactly the same number of turns and/or fractions of a turn to go from lock to lock. If you are centered it should be the same left and right.

 

[DieselDoghouse]

steering wheel

Also, having a hit like that, make sure your track bar is stilll healthy, including the frame end. My bet is, as dieselnerd mentioned, you need the drag link adjusted. I had a shop tell me there was no way to exactly align the wheel without upsetting the toe because adjusting the draglink sleeve was the first step in FEA (their words not mine). Well someone stop me, but Ihave reread the manual section 4x, it seems to me this is just a way to get the wheel aligned with the right tire, THEN you adjust the 'centerlink' (between the wheels) for proper toe-in. In that case tweaking the drag link shouldn't affect the angle between the two tires which IS toe-in?! I went back myself and in 15 minutes (after the upside-down righty-tighty game) got the wheel centered and the truck still tracks fine!! Good Luck!