Thread: With a million details, it's easy to miss one - even if it's obvious.

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This is a bit of a story, so bear with me.

My 34 had been sitting in storage for three years while I was working in Italy. Now that I have settled in Texas, I've been going over it from stem to stern, particularly the steering. The steering wheel has always been indexed a little to the right, which isn't a real problem except for aesthetics. However, when my youngest son and I took it for a ride a couple of weeks ago, the steering was also a little too loose for me.

I tried adjusting the Vega box, but it just wouldn't set up correctly. When I took a close look at the innards, it was pretty worn out - which told me that Gibbon had most likely pulled a Vega box from a junker and repainted it. I set it in the junk pile, and ordered a new Flaming River roller bearing version of the same box and installed it.

When I set the Pitman arm parallel to the centerline of the chassis, the drag link was approximately three inches too long. I measured and re-measured and couldn't figure out how I had gone that many years with that problem. Then I went back and looked at some photos I took when I brought the roller home from Gibbon in Darlington. Guess what? When Gibbon built up this chassis from P&J components, they narrowed the frame at the front. (Gibbon called it the Viper II) That's all well and good - except they used a drag link for a standard '34 chassis - which happens to be about 3" too long.

Not only did I not notice this during my final assembly, but when I eventually replaced the drag link with a chrome unit, I used the same length. I got on the phone with Jason at P&J, and we worked out the correct length based on my measurements. P&J had the replacement here in three days.

I'm still sitting here thinking, "With six years of engineering school and quite a bit of chassis construction behind me, how the heck did I miss that one?"

An easy mistake to make, Jack, but you got it and then shared it with the world here!! Good to know you got it right, and that Jason at P&J was able to help you get there, too.

Thanks for the informative story, Jack. I'll be checking my entire front end and steering in the next few days so I'll keep these points in mind.

Just goes to prove that mistakes happen to the best of us! We're all human! And I'm sure we all have stories to prove that!

I know I do!

Glad you got it fixed and it sounds like it wasn't too painful or expensive.

You know what they say about assuming anything. I to have been down that road. Glad your now on the straight and narrow.

It's one thing to miss something, puzzle - or maybe not - over it, then fix it. It is something else altogether to share the episode with your peers. Thank you for the reminder: we all could have done the same thing.

It would be nice if a chrome drag link with RH/LH threads on the ends had a wrench flat somewhere, wouldn't it?

Originally Posted by Henry Rifle

It would be nice if a chrome drag link with RH/LH threads on the ends had a wrench flat somewhere, wouldn't it?

Don't you think your asking a bit much?