Thread: No steering self centreing

Have you checked the toe in/out?

You don't want to have the steering box firm as it needs to be able to move freely to do it's job,you will crush the bearing on the worm or chip of the hard chroming from the worm itself as the pre-load is very easy to exceed.To much will bind the box up which will stop it from working.If the vehicle is wondering you should check,replace the panhard rod bush, loose wheel bearing's they will both cause very poor roadholding.My defender got a new front end last year as it done just what you have but my steering box and PH bushes and right front swivel pin top bearing were all gone beyond repair. Pat

If the bushes on the rear are shot, could it rear wheel steer a bit?

Check all suspension bushes and the bolts. If the bush is moving on the bolt it can act like it is worn and you get suspension steering. One solution is to tighten the bolt more. They need to be very tight anyway. This doesn't always work if the ends of the metal centre in the bush has already worn into the mounting or the hole is oval. If this is the case it need to be filled. I have used weld and ground flat to do this before.

Especially check the panhard rod bushes. It doesn't take much.
Tire pressure can have an effect too.

Hope this is helpful.

how high is it ?
Not a lot of lift will reduce you caster. Go too high and you caster will be 0*. Then you have no self centring.

In my book, self centring is the ability of the steering to return to centre during cornering. This correlates directly to caster. The more caster, the greater the self centring effect.
Steering wander can be a caster problem, but is usually influenced more by all the things mentioned in the posts above.

Been there, done that!
I've replaced all the bushes, front and back, wheel bearings are fine, toe has been adjusted many times, at various settings with no decernable difference.
Same with tyres and tyre pressures.
I understand that it is castor, but the car hasn't been raised, except by the EAS, air suspension as required.
I'm at my wits end and will be using a self centering steering dampner next. I know this wont fix the problem, but hopefully it will allow me to live with it.
For the first year I owned this vehicle it was great, even though it had very little self centering. I can't think of anything that has changed that could cause this problem

Can you get someone to wiggle the steering wheel while you crawl underneath and feel all the joints.
Each balljoint, each bush etc.

I'm in 100% agreement with what rick130 posted above.

Fitting a return to centre steering damper would just mask the underlying problem, not fix it. So will fitting a trutrac in the front diff.

A wheel alignment shop should be able to tell you what the castor is. From memory, stock castor for a rrc is 3 degrees, and about 1-1/2" lift will reduce that to 0.