Uhoh, No steering!

[37Packard120]

hey everyone, I am new to the forum and did do a search on this subject...

This past weekend after picking up my first Packard on Thursday, my steering wheel started to "unscrew" to the left...thank God I was going very slow....I couldn't believe it.

At first I jumped under the car to see if anything had busted...then I went back to the steering wheel to find it unscrewing to the left. I contiued unscrewing it, until it came off...thats where I saw my problem.

The cogs on the spline at the end of the steering shaft were worn down really bad, as well as inside the steering wheel. To the best of my knowledge, the only thing that was keeping the steering wheel connected to the steering shaft was the torque on the nut that is fix placed onto the horn mechanism. Man....

I was able to put the steering wheel back on, and screwing back in the horn mechanism. I noticed when I would turn the wheel to the right, it would tighten up the horn nut enough to where you could still steer the car, and drive it around the parking lot, but there was no way I was going to try to drive her home.

Have any of you had this problem? Any fix that I can rely on? Brakes and Steering are two things that HAVE to work right.

Thanks in advance...

Don

[flackmaster]

All I can say is YIKES!! and to defend the marque by suggesting this was probably due to someone doing something to your steering wheel/steering shaft splines rather than point to this as some engineering maladay specific to Packard. I would venture to guess you are in the process of determining what the specific problem is - my guess is the steering wheel has been changed, and when the wheel on your car was reinstalled there was a mistake in judgement. Since you started this string, please followup with the findings.

As for the brakes and steering on this car, personally I find them to be most adequete when properly sorted out. If there are any specific questions, please feel free to contact me directly, or just post another question on this forum.

[37Packard120]

flackmaster...thanks for the quick reply. And I was thinking the same as to the replacement of the wheel. Its a Bajo type, but I cannot verify that it was on the car as new. The gears were worn really bad, so I am thinking the same regarding a replacement wheel with a loose fit to start, and over time they wore themself down.

Brakes...I was actually surprised as how good they are for a car designed some 70 years ago. I love my brakes on my Pakard. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I'll be sending you a PM shortly...thanks again for the post and I will follow-up with a post as to how I end up fixing it.