MessingerMedia
New Member
I've been trying to track down this problem for a while now with my 1995 Miata.
I continue to run into an issue of seemingly not having enough caster at increased steering angle. When I first added some steering rack spacers years ago, I noticed an issue with my steering where the car would self steer at low speeds up until a certain point where it would then sort of flop over to the direction I was turning and instead of self steering back to center, it would self steer towards lock and would only return to center once I had manually turned the wheel back towards center. At low angle, the steering was perfect and snappy and made drifting really easy, however, if I needed to use full lock, it would cause me to spin as the steering would not return to center by itself.
To fix this problem, I ended up maxing out the caster and positive camber on lower eccentric bolts on the lower control arm, and viola, the car would self center and had a nice heavy steering feeling even at lock, which made sliding super easy.
Fast forward to present day, I've increased steering angle even more, and I've ran into the same exact issue again. The steering feels perfect and snaps back to center until I turn a little too far to one side and it flops over to lock.
The problem now, is I don't have anymore caster adjustment to play with and I want to know if it is a common problem for vehicles to not have enough caster for the increased angle? It's weird to me that the steering would feel perfect up until a certain angle where it would fall off like it does, is caster angle dynamic and does it change with steering angle? I was worried one of the control arms was bent, but after staring at them for hours, they look fine. I've gone ahead and ordered new upper and lower ball joints, poly control arm bushings, and even some offset bushings to try and squeeze out even more positive caster. I'm thinking maybe the balljoints are just so worn that they're deflecting a bit and causing negative caster at angle.
Let me know what you guys think!
I continue to run into an issue of seemingly not having enough caster at increased steering angle. When I first added some steering rack spacers years ago, I noticed an issue with my steering where the car would self steer at low speeds up until a certain point where it would then sort of flop over to the direction I was turning and instead of self steering back to center, it would self steer towards lock and would only return to center once I had manually turned the wheel back towards center. At low angle, the steering was perfect and snappy and made drifting really easy, however, if I needed to use full lock, it would cause me to spin as the steering would not return to center by itself.
To fix this problem, I ended up maxing out the caster and positive camber on lower eccentric bolts on the lower control arm, and viola, the car would self center and had a nice heavy steering feeling even at lock, which made sliding super easy.
Fast forward to present day, I've increased steering angle even more, and I've ran into the same exact issue again. The steering feels perfect and snaps back to center until I turn a little too far to one side and it flops over to lock.
The problem now, is I don't have anymore caster adjustment to play with and I want to know if it is a common problem for vehicles to not have enough caster for the increased angle? It's weird to me that the steering would feel perfect up until a certain angle where it would fall off like it does, is caster angle dynamic and does it change with steering angle? I was worried one of the control arms was bent, but after staring at them for hours, they look fine. I've gone ahead and ordered new upper and lower ball joints, poly control arm bushings, and even some offset bushings to try and squeeze out even more positive caster. I'm thinking maybe the balljoints are just so worn that they're deflecting a bit and causing negative caster at angle.
Let me know what you guys think!
