1969 Camaros weren’t noted as having the most precise steering systems in the world, and ours was no different. Originally, these cars had a parallelogram steering system consisting of a steering box, pitman arm, center link, idler arm, and tie rods. As you can see in our original sub frame, these are worn out and we wanted something much more precise. We elected to install a rack and pinion system.

An upgrade we decided to make was a conversion to an Ididit tilt steering column. We didn’t like the fact that the original steering column was non-tilt, or the fact that you could grab the wheel and shake it up and down thanks to the old and worn-out bearings. Ididit manufactures new steering columns that are designed to be exact replacements for originals like this Camaro.

Installing a new steering column is not hard, you just remove your original steering coupler (or rag joint) from the steering box, unplug the wiring harness, and unbolt the column from bottom of the dash and lift it out. The Ididit column is the correct length and shape, and it comes with new turn signal and tilt stalks, a new ignition switch and key and correct wiring to plug right in. They also supply an ignition relay.

We topped off our steering column with a reproduction 1969 Z28 steering wheel we got from YearOne. We are real happy with this Ididit column, the tilt action is nice, and the column is precise. Check the Ididit website for applications, as you can get these columns in aluminum, natural steel or plated finishes.

While you can certainly obtain a rebuilt or new steering box and have great road feel, A rack and pinion is a much more precise design because it has fewer moving parts, and the action from the steering input on the pinion gear to actually moving the tie rods is much quicker than the parallelogram design. It’s also considerably lighter in weight than the steering box system.

We elected to use a lightweight racing power steering rack from Appleton Rack and Pinion. There are many benefits of this system; it’s lightweight, it’s a quick-ratio rack, it’s got trick adjustable tie rod pickup points to tune your bump steer, and it’s a power rack.

Appleton offers 5 different servo “feels” ranging from extra light to heavy. These can be ordered to tailor your steering and road feel to your taste or car setup.

The body of the rack is billet aluminum for light weight, and it’s very compact. Appleton offers 6 different ratios – 1.8 to 3.9 inches per turn – allowing you to mate the correct rack to your application.

Another cool feature are the adjustable ends which allow you to ensure your tie rods are in the correct position to eliminate bump steer. If the tie rods are allowed to move on an arc independent of the lower control arm, the motion of the suspension articulating over bumps or around turns will introduce an effect on steering… actually affecting the direction of the wheel. This is called “bump steer”… basically meaning going over bumps turns (steers) the wheels. By setting the tie rod in the same position of the lower control arm, bump steer is reduced or eliminated.

Another innovative Appleton feature is the filter tank cooler (FTC). This tank not only holds the fluid, it has cooling fins to reduce the temperature and a changeable filter to catch contaminates that can harm your steering system.

When designing a steering system, it’s important to keep safety in mind at all times. Our challenge was to connect the Ididit tilt steering column to the Appleton rack, and move around the chassis and the exhaust in the process.
Sometimes you have to make the steering shaft turn corners in order to make it go around objects like the frame, headers and clutch linkage. This can be done with universal joints like these from Borgeson.

Borgeson is a leader in the industry when it comes to making quality steering components, and they manufacture a variety of different universal joints and connectors and adapters to allow you to retrofit basically any kind of steering system into any type of car. In our case, we needed two universal joints and a steering shaft to make it all work.

The joints have a double-D shaped coupler on one end so we can attach it to the steering shaft and the other side has a splined end that will either go on to our steering column or onto the power steering rack.

When designing a steering shaft system, it’s important to make sure the universal joints are not stressed beyond their design limits. Borgeson supplies this info on their website so there is no guessing. In addition, you’ll need to add a support bearing if your system requires more than 2 joints to make sure they’re not all floating around in space. If the shaft is not supported properly, it can bind or not have the strength to turn the input on the rack, and then you crash. Not cool.

Next you can begin the process of measuring how long the steering shaft has to be to connect the two together. While we were mocking everything up, we used a piece of wooden dowel rod and filed the ends of it so that it mimicked the double D shape of the steering shaft. This way we could cut it three of four times and not have to worry about cutting up the new steering shaft.

We ended up needing two universal joints and a steering shaft to go between them. The joints have specific spline counts to match the input shaft on the rack and the output shaft on the column. You’ll also notice the vibration dampener on the joint attaching to the column to keep the shakes out of the steering wheel.

We measured the distance between the universal joints and then added seven eighths of an inch on each side so we were sure that we had enough material engaging in the universal joint and this became the measured length for our steering shaft.

Then we went back to the bench and cut the actual steering shaft based on the measurements we came up with on the wooden dowel rod.

Installing these can be a little tricky because there is not a lot of clearance to slip the joint over the splined ends of the rack and column. Once they were installed, we checked to make sure none of the joints were binding, and tightened and thread-locked all the set screws and jamb nuts to ensure they didn’t come loose.

SOURCES

Appleton Rack & Pinion 

Borgeson

ididit, inc. 

Royal Purple

YearOne 

DISCLAIMER: Demonstrations and procedures contained in the V8TV show or website may not provide all necessary or relevant information. Applicable local laws and regulations may vary and should be checked before any project is commenced. Be sure to follow all applicable safety procedures. The Men's Channel and V8TV Productions, Inc. make no warranties, expressed or implied, as to the completeness, accuracy, or practicality of any such demonstration or procedure or any information with respect thereto contained in the preceding program.

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