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Fun with steering gears---> 1918 Buick


Morgan Wright

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18 hours ago, Morgan Wright said:

This is the type I had in mind:

 

https://www.grainger.com/product/FABORY-Steel-Coiled-Spring-Pin-41LY51

 

Sheer strength 3100 pounds? That will do!

 

Link does not go to Grainger.  Need to copy & paste.

 

Here where it goes.

 

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Edited by Larry Schramm (see edit history)
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On 1/18/2018 at 7:46 PM, KongaMan said:

As long as we're popping off about this...

 

Is the indicated groove in the pad a wear mark?  If it is, it might be beneficial to rotate the pad 180° at reassembly (or make new pads if that's not feasible).  You'd think there's a good chance that wear like that would introduce slop into the system; putting the contact point on a fresh surface might tighten things up a bit..

 

1918-steering-gear-pad.jpg.b155f0402ee40940b922f741e940234e.jpg

 

 

Shop manual says to grind the groove out on a stone.

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3 hours ago, Morgan Wright said:

 

 

Shop manual says to grind the groove out on a stone.

 

Hmm...  If I understand how this works, when the shaft turns, the two half nuts move in opposite directions.  The end piece on one half nut presses against the cam, which causes the cam to rotate.  At the same time, the other half nut retracts.  Now, let us suppose that both end pieces have been ground down.  Would this not create a gap between the half nuts and the cam?  And if there's a gap there, what keeps the cam from rocking back and forth?  Why wouldn't there be a large amount of play in the steering wheel?  Seems to me that those end pieces need to be in constant contact with the cam lobes if the cam is to be held still and the system is to work as a unified mechanism.  Am I missing something here?

 

Consider the two scenarios:

 

:1918-steering-gear-full-pad.jpg.c6de1e01a676a4fbb8b846574528367e.jpg  1918-steering-gear-ground-p.jpg.8e7e0a375f6f1b44e9bea9780d066e13.jpg

 

If that analysis is correct, it seems that grinding the end pieces flat (i.e. removing the groove) doesn't fix anything (there's no functional difference between a grooved pad and pad ground down to the depth of the groove).  Rather, you'd need to install new, thicker end pieces or shim the old ones in order to minimize the free play in the cam.  If you think about it, the only difference between a sheared off end piece and ground down end pieces is a matter of degree; the same problem on a different scale.

Edited by KongaMan (see edit history)
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On 21/01/2018 at 1:32 PM, Morgan Wright said:

Sheer strength 3100 pounds?

 

That is actually the shear strength in DOUBLE shear. If I understand it, your situation is single shear and for that, the shear strength is double what you read on the Grainger spec. sheet = 6200 lbs.

 

The problem here is that strengths are usually quoted in stress units and this is in mass units. So what does it actually mean? And what strength is it? Yield? Breakage?

Edited by Spinneyhill (see edit history)
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5 hours ago, Morgan Wright said:

Weight is not mass. Weight is mass times g which is the acceleration, so weight is a force not a mass.

 

LoL. Of course. But what unit is this? Mass or weight? Stated as pounds or lb it is mass I believe. Weight or force should be lbf. if we are talking in engineering units? If that lb is under gravity, only then is it a force. But what about if it is upwards? This system and apparently sloppy use of units gets me quite confused. In metric, it is clear: kg = mass, N = force.

Edited by Spinneyhill (see edit history)
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Morgan,   What caused those pins to shear.  Were the yoke rollers ceased,   Is there wear or flat spots in the yoke rollers  causing them not to turn,  or do you think the end pieces became loose and jammed, which may have been the case as JB weld had previously been used.

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7 minutes ago, ROD W said:

Morgan,   What caused those pins to shear.  Were the yoke rollers ceased,   Is there wear or flat spots in the yoke rollers  causing them not to turn,  or do you think the end pieces became loose and jammed, which may have been the case as JB weld had previously been used.

 

The rollers are not seized and have no damaged spots. My theory is......as long as the adjustment nut is tight and the endpieces are firm against the rollers, the thing would last forever, but if somebody drove the car when the play was loose and the end pieces were banging against the rollers every time you make a turn or hit a rut, the endpieces would come loose and the pins would shear off. So, if you have one of these cars, tighten the sh** out of the adjustment nut.

 

Pounds and kilograms are units of weight, but when people talk about units of mass they get sloppy and describe it in terms of weight as well because it's how you measure mass, because everywhere on earth the acceleration of gravity is the same and it's always there. So if something weighs a kilogram you say it has a kilogram of mass as well even though that's not really accurate. But a 6 kilogram mass on earth weighs 6 kilograms, but a 6 kilogram mass on the moon weighs 1 kilogram but still has 6 kg mass. Figure that out.

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20 minutes ago, ROD W said:

Morgan,   What caused those pins to shear.  Were the yoke rollers ceased,   Is there wear or flat spots in the yoke rollers  causing them not to turn,  or do you think the end pieces became loose and jammed, which may have been the case as JB weld had previously been used.

 

Nobody used JB weld. This is the first time the inside of this gear box saw the light of day in 101 years. Sheesh.

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4 hours ago, Spinneyhill said:

 

LoL. Of course. But what unit is this? Mass or weight? Stated as pounds or lb it is mass I believe. Weight or force should be lbf. if we are talking in engineering units? If that lb is under gravity, only then is it a force. But what about if it is upwards? This system and apparently sloppy use of units gets me quite confused. In metric, it is clear: kg = mass, N = force.

 

OK, I will likely regret this, but here goes: First, you are right in that pounds-force can and should be written as lbf, but it usually isn't, so you have to be aware of the context. And you most certainly can have an upward force in lbf. Remember Newton's second law, F = ma, or force equals mass times acceleration. In English units mass is in slugs, a derived unit.

 

In the much easier to use SI units, mass is in kilograms and force is in Newtons (kg m/s^2), which is a derived unit for SI. Weight is nominally the force on an object at rest due to gravity, but there are a bunch of subtleties there, so I would refer you to the Wikipedia writeup on weight, which isn't too bad. A good example of the difference in terms of measurement of weight vs mass: a spring scale can be used to determine weight and therefore mass assuming it is calibrated for the altitude at which it will be used (i.e. the gravitational constant is known). A double pan balance can be used to determine mass if you have calibrated masses to balance against. It will work at any altitude (except total weightlessness!) since the weight of the calibrated masses changes at the same rate as the unknown, so it cancels out.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight

 

Cheers, Dave

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Thank you Dave. My problem with upwards is that it is probably also expressed as lb. But then what is the force coz gravity is in the other direction? It should be pound-force I expect.

 

I remember all these unit conversions. I remember playing with the cgs system (as used in Japan) at high school. They use dynes = 1 g.cm/s2, not to mention ergs as a unit of energy. We even tried poundals = 1 lb.ft/s2.

 

I am just an old pedant that is irritated by sloppy use of units. Most people have a pretty vague understanding of what they mean anyway, but this is an engineering item so should be stated correctly. Grumble grumble.

Edited by Spinneyhill (see edit history)
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In auto mechanics, pounds is always force, nobody cares about mass. If you put 20 pounds on a torque wrench at 1 foot, it's 20 foot pounds, if you do the same thing at 2 feet you have 40 foot pounds but the mass never changed. Nobody cares about mass or gravity, except the guy trying to get better gas mileage.

 

My father said you could get better gas mileage by putting wings on a car. That would decrease the weight so much, you could drive the car near take-off speed, you would get 1000 MPG! I said no, Dad, nobody cares about the weight of the car, the mass is what matters. Then he grew quiet. His uncle Wilbur's contraption was weightless, you know, and used lots of gas.

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14 hours ago, KongaMan said:

 

If it's too tight, the rollers might not roll freely. 

 

Posting the above quote again so not everyone tightens the adjustment nut too tight such that lubrication cannot enter the half nuts, yoke roller axles or half nut shoes to yoke roller interfaces and unnecessarily increase the already high contact stress loads within the steering box.

 

Over tightening will also cause high steering efforts (if they weren't high enough already) and poor return of the vehicle to on-center after a turn, a significant safety issue.  While on safety, and worth mentioning again, you can mis-install and reverse the two half nuts resulting in reversed steering.  Before you go anywhere, back to the Moon or down the driveway, check the operation of steering wheel rotation direction to wheel direction.

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Here's a tip. In order to remove the steering column from the car you have to remove the carburetor. Gives enough room to get the steering drive out of the car's frame. Impossible otherwise.

 

Another tip. You can't use a puller the normal way to get the pitman arm off the steering drive, because the car's body is in the way. What worked for me, I took the bolt out of the puller, and hooked the puller over the pitman arm and used a pry bar instead. Worked real well.

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About 100 years ago my dad taught me how to get things like pitman arms and tie rod ends off without a puller at all.

 

Hold a BIG hammer on one side of the arm at the attachment and with another big hammer give the other side a mighty hit. 

Worked every time.

 

Very crude but very effective.

 

That is how I got the pitman arm off my '18 too.  As Morgan says, there is no room for a piuller

 

Never hit the threaded part.

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My parts car is called Bethany because she's from a barn in Bethany, Illinois. I was hoping to harvest some of her organs to transplant into Sidney (from a barn in Sidney, Ohio). Tired of waiting for the spring pins, so I dropped her steering column to see what she had. Unfortunately, the half-nut I was hoping for was even worse, the threads are all stripped off (the one second from the left).

 

So, I have 2 good half-nuts for turning left and 2 bad ones for turning right. This would be good for a racetrack, but not for roads that have right turns.

P1040165.JPG

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On ‎1‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 1:50 PM, Spinneyhill said:

 

That is actually the shear strength in DOUBLE shear. If I understand it, your situation is single shear and for that, the shear strength is double what you read on the Grainger spec. sheet = 6200 lbs.

 

The problem here is that strengths are usually quoted in stress units and this is in mass units. So what does it actually mean? And what strength is it? Yield? Breakage?

 

 

No.

 

3100 lbs. in double shear means that it takes 3100 lbs. to shear the pin as it's supported at each end. In other words, you're shearing the pin in 2 places at the same time. Single shear means you only have to shear the pin in one place, so in single shear, the pin will fail at 1550 lbs., (i.e. one cut takes half the load as two cuts)  In reality, it would most likely shear before that point, due to there being a cantilever effect that also introduces a bending stress. So, in practice, it's not a case of simple shear. Therefore, in whatever unit you like, it's half of the figure that Grainger published. But, it's not really all about loading to breakage. It's about fatigue life. That's where split spring pins fail. The Spirol style pin should do better, probably...

 

In any case, it will be stronger than the soft pins that broke...

Edited by JerryVan (see edit history)
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Still waiting for a day above 40 degrees so I can install Sidney's rebuilt steering column. Temperature -2 this morning. Here is the job:

 

1st (outer) column, 5th (spark) column, throttle and spark control, horn button, quadrant, from Sidney (the car I'm fixing).

 

2nd column (steering, including steering screw), 3rd column (stationary), 4th column (throttle), both half-nuts, yoke assembly with rollers, gear housing, from Bethany (the parts car).

 

Horn wire, grease, gasket material, spring pins, new.

 

Steering wheel, NOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P1040171.JPG

Edited by Morgan Wright (see edit history)
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  • 2 weeks later...

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