Yes, the A-arm bushings are tatty and I'll probably replace those since I have urethane bushings in a box ready to go. The sway bar bushings are looking tired too but I may just leave those alone for now. More surprising was the steering rack. I'd seen pictures of some trashed mounting bushings, and mine are in surprisingly good shape. Also surprising is that the passenger side rack bushing seems to be ok. Generally the OEM bushing disintegrates leaving the rack end unsupported. There was no play in the passenger side tie rod. In fact, there was no play in the suspension components at all. All ball joints and tie rods seem nice and tight. However, I have new ball joints too might as well replace it all since I'm replacing the bushings. I still have a lot of things to pull apart, but I'm not going to touch the steering rack. It looks like someone did some work to it in the past. I can tell because the original steering rack boots were wired at the ends. My boots have hose clamps. Maybe the rack has already been rebuilt?
I decided to tackle a slightly smaller task now, which was adjusting the tie rod ends to straighten out my steering wheel. I started by centering the wheel in it's "off by one hole" configuration and I measured the distance from the rotor to the frame rail on both sides. Then I unbolted the steering wheel and moved it to where it was supposed to be and measured again. The difference was 5mm towards the left. So, adjusting the tie rods to move 5mm to the right should fix it, right?
I cleaned off the locking nut and surrounding area, put some PB blaster on the threads and cracked the nut loose with a 19mm wrench on the lock nut and an adjustable wrench on the tie rod end. Before turning though, I paid close attention to the threads to know which way was loosen. Using a sharpie, I drew a line on the tie rod itself so I knew how much to turn. Turning the tie rod with a vice-grip was pretty simple and after exactly three turns, I had my 5mm. I wanted to go with full turns since trying to measure partial turns was not something I could do accurately and I didn't want to mess up the toe too badly. I doubt that the steering wheel will be completely straight, but it will be much closer. After all this work I'll probably take it somewhere for an alignment anyway so this should get me by.
Before putting the steering wheel back on, I decided to work on another side project. Years ago, I bought a 1.5" steering wheel spacer. Even though the bolt pattern is correct for the MOMO, the inner and outer diameters are both too big. The OD is too big by 8mm and makes the thing look really clunky. The ID is also too big so the horn button doesn't fit.
It's times like this that I'm glad I have a lathe. I chucked it up in my 4-jaw and turned it down by 8mm. It's slow going since this little lathe can't take much off at a time. Now that the OD is done, I'll turn a little stepped collar for the inside so the horn button will fit.
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