Official Curmudgeon
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Kansas
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Re: Steering \"Return to Center\" on my cj7
Confused yet?
Ok, lets make it simple. Think of a caster wheel like on a shopping car. Now, imagine a line through the steering pivot. That imaginary line would touch the floor in front of the point where the wheel touches the floor. The wheel tracks behind the steering pivot point. That's positive caster.
Now, imagine a bicycle or motorcycle. The imaginary line through the steering pivot touches the ground in front of the point where the tire patch touches the ground. Again, positive caster.
Both of the previously mentioned vehicles have a lot of positive caster, a Jeep (or a car) does not. The imaginary line through the steering pivots still touches the ground ahead of the center of the tire contact patch for possitive. For more caster, you need to cause the imaginary line to touch the ground further ahead of the center of the contact patch.
To accomplish the goal, you need to pivot the top of the axle to the rear and the bottom forward. If the springs are below the axle, the fat part of the wedge goes to the front. If you had SOA, the fat part would go to the rear.