Steering box won't turn all the way left

[carnuck]

Something in the box suddenly binding?

[Stuka]

So just to be clear, you can turn it one way and it will hit the bump stops, but you turn it the other way and it will not. And with the tires straight, the pitman arm and steering wheel are both straight?

[jamesdart]

Something in the box suddenly binding?

that's what I think. but I seem to be the only one.

ill start over.
on a trail ride in august I noticed at some point, the steering wheel was almost upside down to drive straight. I got out and checked for a bent steering damper, drag link, or tie rod. anything obvious to throw it that far off. nothing. I kept going. later In the day I noticed it lost some turning radius to the left. back at the camp I had my wife turn the wheel and at full lock to the left, the steering stop was at least 1" away from contacting. that's a lot. the wheel was closer to straight than it was to being fully turned. when I got home, I attempted to adjust the drag link to get the left turn back but realized I had to split the difference. I wound up with about 1/16" gap away from the steering stops on each side, something inside the box is stopping it, as far as I can tell. the steering wheel is now about 90 degrees off from where it should be. there is no adjustment left in the drag link to get a full lock to lock turn AND correct the steering wheel. to adjust the drag link as short as it needed to be, I had to take it apart and clean 40 years of dirt from the middle of it and clean the threads. there is only about 3/8" of thread showing on each side of the adjuster on the drag link.
before this happened, there was more travel in the steering than needed, I had to screw out the steering stops to keep the tires from contacting the leaf springs, and there was enough to straighten out the steering wheel after the lift, and again after the new box.

[Stuka]

So with the way it is now, when the tires are straight, is the pitman arm fully straight back? Or is it off to one side or another. If its fully straight when the tires are straight, it means it is not the drag link or tie rod. Although with you saying you had to dig dirt out to get it adjusted, it sounds like the pitman arm is not straight.

[Jerry Blair]

I don't know if you are still using a rag joint for the steering shaft. Is it possible the rag joint slipped?

[jamesdart]

I put an xj shaft on it. If that slipped it would only have effected the steering wheel position.

[Tatsadasayago]

This is a strange one indeed.
With the info you've shared, the likely cause would be something between the frame, steering gear and drag-link/tie rod. I went outside and stared at my setup for a long time and concluded that:
It's fairly unlikely that: Your pittman arm jumped the splines or your drag link adjuster was compressed and jumped it's threads.
Since you've lost steering travel to the left, your drag link would have to been shortened by the adjuster moving or the bar itself having been bent enough to physically shorten the distance between the pittman arm and where the drag link connects to the tie rod. The only other possibility I can see is that your frame rail was twisted or cracked allowing the steering gear to rotate moving the pittman arm toward the drivers side. That would have the same effect as shortening the drag link. You would have the spindle stop on the passenger side come into contact sooner while the opposite would occur at the other side.

I've seen quite a few 80s Grands with weak frame rails from the factory that had customers describing the handling as: "It drives like it has a hinge in the middle of the vehicle". Add some rust and a good hit of a tire against a rock and I can easily see your kind of situation happening.

I hope you sort out the cause and share it with us.

Jim

[jamesdart]

frame looks fine to me. im still convinced its something inside the box.

[RockRollin]

Drop the pitman arm and see what you have lock to lock, see if that matches manufacturers spec.

[carnuck]

Check the steering stop bolts on the axle haven't backed out? Rock stuck in the balljoint? Bent leaf springs?

[SJTD]

Stock box? What year? How many turns lock to lock?

Should be someone with the same year to compare to to tell if it's the box.

For that matter, center the arm and see how many turns to lock in each direction. Maybe you did this, I didn't reread the whole thread.