While doing the test drives a couple of days ago I noticed that there was a fair amount of lateral free-play in the front wheels. This is similar to what Gordon Koppang wrote about last year when he rebuilt his steering system for exactly the same reason.

I lifted up the front end and the problem seemed to be in the same place. The large vertical bolts that hold the steering pivots seems to have a lot of looseness in them, allowing the bottom of the wheels at the tires to move in and out about 1/2".

In a week of rain, the weather was actually nice yesterday so we opened up the garage and rolled the quadracycle half out, blocked up the front end and proceeded to pull the steering mechanism and the front wheels off. It is all very logical and easy to see how it works. After disconnecting the tie-rod and the small steering rod the vertical bolts slide through the frame, a few washers, a large rubber bushing and the steering pivot brackets. In pulling this assembly apart I found the same thing Gordon found - the shimming between the bolt and the steering brackets consists of two plastic split cones on each side (see photo). These had either worn or were undersized to start with and were allowing a small amount of movement. Of course through the wonders of leverage, a small movement in the bearing surface becomes a fairly large movement at the wheel rim and tire.



I decided that the best solution was to snug the gaps up, but rather than use masking tape, as Gordon did, I opted for Teflon tape. This type of tape, used in plumbing, is very thin and so several wraps were needed to take up as much slack as possible. Teflon tape is very tough and of course makes a good sliding bearing surface. After wrapping the split cones we assembled the whole thing and found that the slack is now much reduced. Obviously you can't take out all the play in the system or else the steering would bind.

A quick test run showed that the free-play has been reduced and the steering feels much better as well.

Having the quadracycle front end apart also gave us a chance to see how the parts are holding up and, other than the plastic cones, I am pleased to report no visible wear on any other parts.

Today was more rain again and the next seven days looks like lots more rain and perhaps even some snow, all except Sunday, which is forecast to be +8C and only cloudy. I guess we will have to get out quadracycling on Sunday!

Gordon sent me a note saying: "The little flanged inserts are called "Nyliners" and, no, they don't make a flanged nyliner with a .035 thickness."