Skyline R34 Remove & Replace Steering Wheel & Airbag & Resetting Airbag Alarm

[Kinkstaah]

I honestly don't remember, but it was as simple as lining it all up. It's possible the wheel and clock spring do intertwine, or the clock spring itself doesn't have splines on it so it doesn't matter as it just slips over it and it's the wheel splines that matter.

I just recall it being simple and easy and you're overthinking it

[silviaz]

14 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

I honestly don't remember, but it was as simple as lining it all up. It's possible the wheel and clock spring do intertwine, or the clock spring itself doesn't have splines on it so it doesn't matter as it just slips over it and it's the wheel splines that matter.

I just recall it being simple and easy and you're overthinking it

I hope so, this should have been a simple job. Not sure where it went wrong lol. Will try again.

Edited February 3 by silviaz

[silviaz]

51 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

I honestly don't remember, but it was as simple as lining it all up. It's possible the wheel and clock spring do intertwine, or the clock spring itself doesn't have splines on it so it doesn't matter as it just slips over it and it's the wheel splines that matter.

I just recall it being simple and easy and you're overthinking it

Ok I fixed it, and now it's straight but my car is veering to the left, which I guess is part of a wheel alignment. I just noticed that my rear and front tyres don't have the exact same alignment. Which I'm guessing my mechanic did it manually as opposed to be put on a machine.

 

I think I figured out what the whole issue is. That spline when its at the top, the wheels should be perfectly straight but it's not so the alignment should have been done when the spline was at the top so when it does get removed everything is in sync, whereas now even though it's straight, the spline is towards the left. 

Edited February 4 by silviaz

[silviaz]

On 2/4/2024 at 10:35 AM, Kinkstaah said:

I honestly don't remember, but it was as simple as lining it all up. It's possible the wheel and clock spring do intertwine, or the clock spring itself doesn't have splines on it so it doesn't matter as it just slips over it and it's the wheel splines that matter.

I just recall it being simple and easy and you're overthinking it

Got another wheel alignment done, turns out it was way off, though it still veers to the left lol. I'll just live with it. I had the tyre shop and my mechanic said it's normal apparently for it to go a bit to the side cause the roads are sloped but does it on any road.

[Kinkstaah]

I mean there's a few things it can be.

1) The steering wheel is misaligned
2) The steering RACK is misaligned (near impossible to have broken this unless you pulled the steering rack apart)
3) Alignment is f**ky

If your alignment is perfect your car will pull left due to slope on the road. All roads slope away from the crown. Sometimes alignment shops will want to not run totally neutral toe/alignments due to this because they will tell you, well, exactly what the alignment shop told you.

[GTSBoy]

A good street alignment will generally run a slightly different toe angle left to right, or more often it is done with caster, to make the car want to climb up the camber of a typical 2 lane road. For RHD cars (driving on the LHS of the road), it should want to pull a little to the right.

This can often suck when you're on the wrong side of the camber, like in the right lane of a divided carriageway where the right lane is cambered the other way. They're not all this way, often split roads just have the right lane higher than the left to make water drain off to the outside.

It can also cause accidents when numpties overtake in the country, because they drift off the right side and take out innocent trees.

[silviaz]

2 hours ago, Kinkstaah said:

I mean there's a few things it can be.

1) The steering wheel is misaligned
2) The steering RACK is misaligned (near impossible to have broken this unless you pulled the steering rack apart)
3) Alignment is f**ky

If your alignment is perfect your car will pull left due to slope on the road. All roads slope away from the crown. Sometimes alignment shops will want to not run totally neutral toe/alignments due to this because they will tell you, well, exactly what the alignment shop told you.

I thought the steering wheel has nothing to do with the car veering in one direction? I asked @Dose Pipe Sutututu on another thread apparently it's not related (hope it's ok if I tag u in here)

With the rack, nah I didn't touch that at all.

2nd alignment now, so hoping it's ok. 

Correct me if I'm wrong but seems like what you said above, that my scenario is normal and no adjustments need to be done?

[silviaz]

1 hour ago, GTSBoy said:

A good street alignment will generally run a slightly different toe angle left to right, or more often it is done with caster, to make the car want to climb up the camber of a typical 2 lane road. For RHD cars (driving on the LHS of the road), it should want to pull a little to the right.

This can often suck when you're on the wrong side of the camber, like in the right lane of a divided carriageway where the right lane is cambered the other way. They're not all this way, often split roads just have the right lane higher than the left to make water drain off to the outside.

It can also cause accidents when numpties overtake in the country, because they drift off the right side and take out innocent trees.

Ah ok, so I guess in my case everything is correct? I went to take out my other car and it seems like it does the same thing except the alignment on that one is f**ked because my left tyre is bald on the edge lol.

[Kinkstaah]

3 minutes ago, silviaz said:

I thought the steering wheel has nothing to do with the car veering in one direction? I asked @Dose Pipe Sutututu on another thread apparently it's not related (hope it's ok if I tag u in here)

With the rack, nah I didn't touch that at all.

2nd alignment now, so hoping it's ok. 

Correct me if I'm wrong but seems like what you said above, that my scenario is normal and no adjustments need to be done?

What I meant by misaligned, is that if you are PHYSICALLY holding the wheel straight, and the car is veering off to nowhere, then it's possible it can be wrong.

Imagine a scenario where the wheels were perfectly straight and aligned normally with regards to the steering wheel.

Then you take the steering wheel off, and replace it incorrectly, leaving it on an angle.
Then you go for a drive and attempt to force the steering wheel straight.

I agree with Dose given what he said at the time in the context he posted it in the other thread. The wheel itself or where it is pointing doesn't really matter. It's where the splines are pointing that actually matters. The wheel just slips ontop and allows you to manipulate said splines in the steering rack. Technically having it point in the correct direction is aesthetics only, but if you are forcing it to be straight when it isn't on square then you're effectively driving a certain amount left/right.

[silviaz]

Just now, Kinkstaah said:

What I meant by misaligned, is that if you are PHYSICALLY holding the wheel straight, and the car is veering off to nowhere, then it's possible it can be wrong.

Imagine a scenario where the wheels were perfectly straight and aligned normally with regards to the steering wheel.

Then you take the steering wheel off, and replace it incorrectly, leaving it on an angle.
Then you go for a drive and attempt to force the steering wheel straight.

I agree with Dose given what he said at the time in the context he posted it in the other thread. The wheel itself or where it is pointing doesn't really matter. It's where the splines are pointing that actually matters. The wheel just slips ontop and allows you to manipulate said splines in the steering rack. Technically having it point in the correct direction is aesthetics only, but if you are forcing it to be straight when it isn't on square then you're effectively driving a certain amount left/right.

Ah nah that's not my case scenario, if I hold the wheel then all is good. I only need to hold it a little bit to keep it straight. 

[GTSBoy]

8 minutes ago, silviaz said:

I thought the steering wheel has nothing to do with the car veering in one direction? I asked @Dose Pipe Sutututu on another thread apparently it's not related (hope it's ok if I tag u in here)

If you put the wheel back on in the incorrect position (ie, one spline off) then do a wheel alignment, you can make it drive straight with the wheel straight, but because the wheel alignment will have compensated for the wheel being rotated when the rack is centred, there will be more turns of travel to one side or the other (meaning you'll be able to turn tighter on one side than the other). This is an example of what happens if you do the wrong thing, then do another wrong thing on top to mask it.

If you put the wheel on crooked, but don't cover it up with an alignment, then you will drive straight with the wheel rotated one way or the other. It will feel wrong, but it will work fine and can be easily fixed by putting the wheel back on.

If you do any of this with a buggered wheel alignment, then go get the alignment fixed, then it's anybody's guess as to where you are. To fix this stuff you need to unhook the tie rods from the steering arms, rotate the wheel all the way to the left, then all the way to the right, counting the exact number of turns (right down to the correct fraction of a turn) and then turn the wheel back to the centre by going exactly half that number of turns. The rack is now centred. If the wheel is not straight, then you have to fix the wheel. If you can't get it straight with the rack centred (ie, moving only one spline either way still has the steering wheel crooked one way or the other) then you need to pick the splice that causes the least error and call that position "centre" on the rack. The rack will be slightly off centre, but you have to live with that. Then you just hook the tie rods back and and do a wheel alignment with the wheel centred and it should all come out good. Worst case, you get the wheel aligner to do all this because this is the sort of mess that they have to fix up all the time.

[silviaz]

9 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

If you put the wheel back on in the incorrect position (ie, one spline off) then do a wheel alignment, you can make it drive straight with the wheel straight, but because the wheel alignment will have compensated for the wheel being rotated when the rack is centred, there will be more turns of travel to one side or the other (meaning you'll be able to turn tighter on one side than the other). This is an example of what happens if you do the wrong thing, then do another wrong thing on top to mask it.

If you put the wheel on crooked, but don't cover it up with an alignment, then you will drive straight with the wheel rotated one way or the other. It will feel wrong, but it will work fine and can be easily fixed by putting the wheel back on.

If you do any of this with a buggered wheel alignment, then go get the alignment fixed, then it's anybody's guess as to where you are. To fix this stuff you need to unhook the tie rods from the steering arms, rotate the wheel all the way to the left, then all the way to the right, counting the exact number of turns (right down to the correct fraction of a turn) and then turn the wheel back to the centre by going exactly half that number of turns. The rack is now centred. If the wheel is not straight, then you have to fix the wheel. If you can't get it straight with the rack centred (ie, moving only one spline either way still has the steering wheel crooked one way or the other) then you need to pick the splice that causes the least error and call that position "centre" on the rack. The rack will be slightly off centre, but you have to live with that. Then you just hook the tie rods back and and do a wheel alignment with the wheel centred and it should all come out good. Worst case, you get the wheel aligner to do all this because this is the sort of mess that they have to fix up all the time.

Ah right, I put the steering back on straight so it should be all good. It's just the spline that's pointing towards the left (picture attached of roughly where my spline is pointing in orange, but steering wheel is straight, it was like this before I removed the wheel)  . I'll probably just leave it. Or knowing me, it'll bother me for a short while and I'll end up ripping the damn steering wheel off again.

 

 

Edited February 5 by silviaz

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

2 hours ago, silviaz said:

I thought the steering wheel has nothing to do with the car veering in one direction? I asked @Dose Pipe Sutututu on another thread apparently it's not related (hope it's ok if I tag u in here)

With the rack, nah I didn't touch that at all.

2nd alignment now, so hoping it's ok. 

Correct me if I'm wrong but seems like what you said above, that my scenario is normal and no adjustments need to be done?

provided the you've work out the centre of the rack and positioned the wheel in the centre, then everything else is dependent on the alignment.

(Not sure this is the correct way, but this is how I've done it with my own cars)

Measure equal amounts of the exposed rack, this would be the centre. Now note where the wheel is in the car, and remove/adjust the steering wheel so it's also centred.

I find with these old shit boxes, steering wheels have be removed, replaced, then returned back to factory for compliance reasons and/or previous owners have stuffed with them OR worse, cars have been binned into gutters so now the car "drives" straight with the wheel pointing in the wrong direction so people remove and re-centre wheels so it's perceived as centred.

[silviaz]

1 hour ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

provided the you've work out the centre of the rack and positioned the wheel in the centre, then everything else is dependent on the alignment.

(Not sure this is the correct way, but this is how I've done it with my own cars)

Measure equal amounts of the exposed rack, this would be the centre. Now note where the wheel is in the car, and remove/adjust the steering wheel so it's also centred.

I find with these old shit boxes, steering wheels have be removed, replaced, then returned back to factory for compliance reasons and/or previous owners have stuffed with them OR worse, cars have been binned into gutters so now the car "drives" straight with the wheel pointing in the wrong direction so people remove and re-centre wheels so it's perceived as centred.

Yeah that makes sense. I definitely didn't touch the rack, I generally know what to not attempt these days after all my previous f**kups haha. I think the reason originally my steering wheel was crooked when i put it back on for the first time was because I didn't put it back on straight like how I had it before I removed it, instead I lined it up with the spindle mark as per the tutorial but I guess that doesn't take into account if someone messed with the system beforehand.

[silviaz]

I forgot to mention that the indicator stalk isn't cancelling when turning on a roundabout after I did this. That's related to the clockspring I assume?

[GTSBoy]

yup

[silviaz]

22 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

If you put the wheel back on in the incorrect position (ie, one spline off) then do a wheel alignment, you can make it drive straight with the wheel straight, but because the wheel alignment will have compensated for the wheel being rotated when the rack is centred, there will be more turns of travel to one side or the other (meaning you'll be able to turn tighter on one side than the other). This is an example of what happens if you do the wrong thing, then do another wrong thing on top to mask it.

A random update, I checked the amount of turns on both sides of the wheel and it's the same. I'm going into a suspension shop soon to verify things.

[silviaz]

Update - so I got it checked out and turns out apparently it's normal because the front of the car doesn't have adjustable arms at the front and apparently the tyres actually wear out on the side a bit more from the factory which did sound off to me. Nothing to do with the alignment apprently.

[GTSBoy]

8 hours ago, silviaz said:

apparently it's normal

What's normal?

[silviaz]

2 hours ago, GTSBoy said:

What's normal?

The veering to the left when letting go of the steering wheel. But to make it go in a straight line so my tyres don't wear out I need adjustable arms on the front apparently, or if I'm lucky my worn out bushing is what's causing the problem.(I got a squeaky front end and it creeks when I turn when the car has stopped)

Edited February 7 by silviaz