Zabeard, what did you do to twist the shaft off. Are you using the steering system for a hydralic press or such? I went out and looked at my 2003 and it looks like it would take something like having the front wheels down in two ruts and trying to twist the wheels in the ruts. I'm not even sure it could twist the shaft in two doing that.

 

on the bright side your getting WICKED gas mileage

 

lets hope so, i called them and they are not very formal just said ship the stuff we will figure it out. idk i am going to call again.

 

its because my truck is Solid axle and has a real steering box on it. 98+ rangers have rack and pinion.

 

lol yeah but trapped at home or work. it sucks.

 

I guess you do some serious off road driving then.

 

no its called he doesnt have anything in the front end that is stock ranger anymore...

 

here is the shaft that I should be having made

 

Zach, let me know asap when you get that shaft back, I want a new one as well.

Brenton

 

I think a lot of the reason it broke is your geometry on the makeup.

A single rag joint and u joint way down at the end of the shaft allows a lot of leverage on the long stub. Mine is done differently and I'm less worried about it. No less "rigged" than yours -- but I think the configuration puts a lot less stress on the point where the steering shaft joins the steering wheel shaft.



Depending on the angle of your steering box and so forth, a single u-joint with a rag joint may just have caused to bending stress on the shaft which concentrated at the join.

My u-joint at the box is more of a CV type that has the sliding piece inside it. It's pretty flexible and can telescope at the same time. You can't see that joint in the pic above. But you can see the Chevy AstroVan u-joint and the 3/4" solid rod.

The piece from my original shaft is press fit into the AstroVan u-joint which had a 1" DD end on it. Then I welded it to the joint.

So far so good. We'll see if mine breaks.

 

mine worked great until i started busting snow drifts... yours still has that weak point I would remove that asap that part where the bolt goes through is going to tear I'' put money on it.

as for me I went to the junk yard today and started checking out all the steering shafts. I decided I liked that chevy astro shaft so i pulled it. I also pulled the ranger shaft again. I am going to swap the ends on them and it should be bolt on.

So I stopped my package to flaming river for right now.

 

That shaft from flaming is hell for stout. Are you going to use Ujoints on both ends. I have to agree that the rubber flex still has some problems with your set up. You need something that is hell for stout and two Ujoints.

 

the rag joint? it works fine for what it is, I need another ujoint on the firewall end of the shaft like griggs shows. the astro shaft should work well for that.

 

It's not a bad shaft overall. I found an article on using them that clued me into making something from those parts. It's nice because it's not too hard to get at also.

Here's the article: http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/w...junkyard_parts

One of the difficulties for my setup is the big 3/4"-36 spline end on the Ford box. You almost have no choice but to make something because of the non-standard hookup between the Ranger column shaft and the box end.

Rag joints are good for vibration isolation, but I won't use one as I consider them disposable and somewhat undesirable overall.

They could act like a stress absorber though to keep other things from breaking so there might be some benefit that way.