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.................Steering Bellcrank Part III & Tie Rods


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Back on ( page 54 ) and ( page 55 ) I made the first bellcrank to connect the steering box to the tie rods. Here I'll quickly show how I used the first one to make a duplicate one. I made all of the pieces back when I made the first one. Here I have placed the first one into a vice and and used pieces of wood that are the right thickness to clamp the pieces that make up the second one to the first one.

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I used three bolts to locate the two ends and the pivot point. Next I tack welded the arms to the center bushing (left two arrows) and the bushing at the end of the arm on the right above.

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Here you can see the two bellcranks still bolted together.

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I bored the end that attaches to the rack and pinion out to accept a bushing.....

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.....seen inserted here.

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Next the center pivot was bored out to accept two more............

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.............bushings. One on the top and one on the bottom. Finally I made a bracket that located these bell crank to the left side of the car similar to the one I constructed back on ( page 55 ).

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In the picture above you can see I was using a piece of wood to represent the tie rod going from the bellcrank to the steering arm on the front spindle ( note: the steering arm in the picture is not the final one. See page 59 for the finished steering arm). To make the tie rods I..........

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............... took two 3/4 inch Swedged Sleeves I got from Speedway motors and cut them in half (top and bottom of the picture). These had 3/4 LH and RH Pro 1 Heim Joints screwed into the ends of them. I measured two pieces of 1 inch DOM tubing the correct length and drilled 4 holes at 90 degrees to each other a little ways in from both ends. The holes will be used to plug weld the sleeves to the DOM.

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Here are the two tie rods with he sleeves slid in and tack welded for now. The sleeves were a perfect slide fit inside of the DOM.

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Here you can see the tie rod in place between the steering bellcrank and the steering arm on the front spindle.


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