Prostar to much play in the steering wheel

[Rawze]

Well, forum member 'zuoo' showed up at my doorstep the other day, since the conversation here. Here is a summary, as best I remember it..


When he showed up, I took a walk-around and visual look at his axles. He told me he had it to an axle alignment specialist... What a sad da$mn joke!!!>

Mistake #1...
Right away, I noticed that some complete moron shimmed BOTH SIDES of his forward rear axle. What kind of special idiot would shim both sides?... all this does is move it forward 1/2 inch or less ... and does not change its alignment much of nothing at all.

Mistake #2 ...
I could see that his front end has lots of shimms, waay too many in fact, jacking the caster alignment all into oblivion it looked like. It also had a couple new major components with new bushing in it .. soo, I thought to myself .. ok.. and asked him how they got there. here is what the truck owner had to say (loosely translated)...
"Well.. they just kept shimmg it and then having me drive it around the block until it stopped pulling to one side, and that is all they did".

My thoughts were, WHAT THE FU$%#@%$K!!!!??????!!!!!.

-== Ummmm... WHAT did the caster alignment measure out to ????.. and then I let him know what it was supposed to be for a hendrickson fulll air-suspension front end. Here are the numbers for different front ends ...

--= For regular spring-suspension front ends, it is supposed to be +4 (drivers side) and +6 (passenger side). This would be for Petes', KW's, Prostars, Volvo's, cascadias, columbias,.. you name it.. if it has a leaf-spring front end on it, its supposed to be set at 4 and 6.

--= For spring-suspension front ends that DO have air bags in the back-end of the springs (some Volvo's and other paccar light front end trucks are like this). It is supposed to be +5 (drivers side) and +7 (passenger side). This is because they are slight more unstable at driving speeds.

--= For the Hendrickson, no spring suspension whatsoever ... no leaf springs at all, but instead are nothing but hard parts and big air bags .... They have a different requirement yet, and have to be set to +6 (drivers side) and +8 (passenger side), or the front end is squerrelly and is all over the road when you let go of the steering wheel.

Those hendrickson full-air-suspension front ends are a unique design of their own, and many alignment shops cannot align them properly whatsoever. The King pins are non-replacable, (you replace and then have to precision machine the brass bushings instead), and they are a very different beast to anything else out there.

-=== SOOOOO.. what he said they just randomly shimmed it until it did not pull to one side any more .. and knowuing that they jacked around with his rear axles horribly.. you know that the conclusion to that is...

ITS ALL F#erREUCKED UP NOW!!!>

-- Then,.. it gets worse ... he proceeds to tell me that after it stopped pulling to one side by them randomly stacking shimms, jacking around with the front end caster into oblivion at gawd-knows what angles now .. , the steering wheel was now 90 degrees to one side when going down the road straight.

- I stopped him and told him how that his truck did NOT look like it has even been in a wreck, nor it looked like anything in the front end has slipped out of place mechanically. -= It did NOT look like anyone has removed or touched the drag link connection to the steering box, and that the steering wheel bar is keyed on those prostars to the top of the steering box, so no one could have mis-aligned the steering wheel in its past!!. --== I.E.> -- THAT steering wheel should be sitting RIGHT AT ITS CENTER, PERFECTLY!....

He interrupts me and then proceeds to tell me...

-== "They took a sledge hammer and beat the steering wheel nut and assembly inside the cab because they wanted to re-clock the steering wheel itself to get it back straight" .. and they finally re-clocked the steering wheel after some amount of large effort.

... after hearing this... NOW THINGS ARE MUCH MUCH WORSE!!!... AND are making more sense to me.

YUP.. if all this is exactly what happened .. they must be some kind of special certifiabe clueless damn morons. What a sad ckuster$Fuk!!.

============

FIRST AND FOREMOST!!!!....

I took him into the house and showed them the proper procedures to align the front end, and how that the caster alignment and procedures in the service/rebuild manual ...

CAN ONLY BE DONE BY DIAL INDICATOR AND PROPER ANGLE GAUGES, AND NOT A DAMN USELESS GARBAGE LASER TRUCK ALIGNMENT DEVICE!!!... AND THAT THE CASTER ON HIS MODEL HAS A SPECIFIC TOLERANCE OF 7 DEG +/- 1 .. and that for crown in the road,,. it should be set to 6(drivers side) AND 8(passenger side) DEGREES!!!. THIS PROCEDURE DOES NOT INVOLVE THE DAMN TRUCK OWNER DRIVING AROUND THE BLOCK AND 'FEELING' HOW IT PULLS!!!!.

NEXT!!!.... I TOLD HIM that no one.. but NO ONE should have EVER CLOCKED THAT DAMN STEERING WHEEL WHATSOEVER!!!... based on HOW IT DROVE DOWN THE ROADS!!!... BIGGEST DAMN MISTAKE #2~!!!.

The DAMN STEERING BOXES ON THOSE PROSTARS.. ESPECIALLY THE ONES WITH THE HENDRICKSON FRONT ENDS, HAS FULL-ON "ACTIVE RETURN" STEERING !!!. The TRW brand calls it 'PCF (positive centering feed-back)' designed into the steering box to assist in lane control AND TO SELF CENTER THE STEERING WHEEL WHEN YOU LET GO OF IT AT HIGHWAY SPEEDS so that it is not all over the road when you let go of the steering.

BECAUSE OF THIS!!!>>> THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO CLOCK THAT GO$%DAMN STEERING WHEEL!!!>... BY JACKING UP THE TRUCK TO GET ALL THE WEIGHT OFF IT, OR BETTEER YET.. BY REMOVING THE DRAG LINK!!!>.. AND then cranking the engine, revving it up to 1500+ rpm to get full hydraulic pressure to the steering box, and FIND ITS ACTIVE CENTER-POINT that it will actively try to hold while going down the road!!!>

ONLY THEN CAN YOU CHECK OR ATTEMPT TO RE-CLOCK THAT DAMN STEERING WHEEL ITSELF!!!.. AND IT LOOKS LIKE NO ONE DID THAT AT ALL!!!> THAT IS ALSO A BIG PART OF WHY THE STEERING BAR IS KEYED!.

-== AND LIKE I SAID!!!>... The truck has never been wrecked!. The gear-box has never been removed. The steering bar was replaced, but IT IS KEYED!. And The drag-link has never been removed!.

So, what they essentially did was SCREW EVERYTHING UP ALL AT ONCE~!!!. they jacked up the rear end alignment into utter oblivion, mkaing it pull to one side real bad. They THEN JACKED UP THE CASTER ALIGNMENT into utter oblivion to try to fix this error, compounding the issues,.. and getting the whole trucks driving angle off-center badly enough that the steering-wheel is now sitting at 90deg. ... AND NOW THE STEERING BOX'S ACTIVE LANE CONTROL (active return control) IS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THIS ALL THE TIME NOW.. AND ONE SYSTEM IS FIGHTING AGAINST THE OTHER, AND NOW THE WHOLE TRUCK IS ALL OVER THE DAMN ROADS AND UNSAFE TO DRIVE!!!.

According to the truck owner.. that steering wheel is jumping all over while driving. It no longer has any center-point at all to it, and he has to fight it like mad just to keep going straight. You let go of that steering wheel for aeven one second.. and that thing is going to slam one way or the other like you trying to balance on a round ball and not fall off!.


DAMN THEY SCREWED HIS TRUCK INTO OBLIVION!!!>.. is all I can say.

What a damn rotten half-arssed garbage mess!!>..... ALL FROM AN ALIGNMENT SHOP WHO CLAIMS TO SPECIALIZE IN FRONT ENDS.. AND WITH A FANCY-DACY LASER ALIGNMENT DEVICE (those things are the worst)!!!... THOSE ARE THE TYPE OF WORST PLACES IN THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY!!!... and to add insult to injury.. the local International dealer is the one who told this truck owner to go there.

What a damn mess!.

-== I told him that I could not help him (still not taking guests for major work like that since surgery), and for him to find someone who actually knew how to do a proper front-end and back-end alignment on it. But I know what the outcome will most likely be at this point.


How about someone SEND THAT MECHANIC A LINK TO THIS THREAD SO THAT HE CAN SEE HOW BADLY THEY SCREWED UP AND HOW UTTERLY CLUELESS THEY WERE!!! .. But in all reality.. they are more than welcome to call me and discuss how to straighten it out correctly if they like.

It seems no one is left on the planet that gives a f#uck out here with regard to these trucks any more.. and those hendrickson front ends are not to be played with like that. Someone has to actually, and simply set them TO THEIR BOOK SPECS .. PLUS SET THE STEERING WHEEL ON CENTER WITH TO THE ACTIVE STEERING IN THE GEAR-BOX .. PLUS (if front end ever does get hit, twisted, etc.) SET THE CASTER AND STEERING ANGLE PROPERLY AT THAT POSITION and leave the alone! ... and then everything is aligned and works as it should + it will center itself if properly when someone lets go of the steering wheel.