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As Horizenjob points out, there are special rod ends/heims for steering shaft, examples below:

http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Steering-Shaft-Heim-3-4-Inch-RH,84.html

From the catalog listing:

I grabbed Speedway's info because it was convenient, not advertising for them. There are several companies that make these things.
Hope This Helps-
JDK

1/ 100% it will fail.

2/ It's the steering, it offers the worst case senerios over any other component if it fails.

3/ The failure will be instantaneous.

The shaft is in a tube so danger from failure probably not so bad, the shaft really can't go anywhere but there's people who veiw this forum to learn how to build cars and this is bottom of the barrel quality and very unsafe, no offense to the OP who probably doesn't know.

I actually bother to post these posts not from ego but when you start getting people and property damaged from poor engineering, then the legislators will move in and stop all our fun and this is what we should rate as our biggest enemy and be pro-active about.

I found that so-called 3/4" steering shaft is really loose in the "slighly oversized" bushings available through the aftermarket. Never bothered to measure to see which was so far off but it was pretty annoying the amount of slop that it caused at the wheel.

I simply do not agree. There is minimum stress on that bearing or on the welds themselves. I do agree that trying to weld into a hardened steel race is not a good practice in any application. I assumed, and probably that is a bad thing to do, that there would be more substantial welding afterwards and what we see is just an intermediate step.


I can't say that steering is any worse than any other primary system failure. the failure of a front (or rear for that matter) control arm, or total loss of brakes, for example. Yes, loss of steering is a very bad scenario. But this application, the total loss of steering is not the failure mode.


Failure of separate welds will be sequential. Detection of the final weld failure may be instantaneous.


That was exactly my point. In this application and in this design, IF it fails, the car remains under some control.

I do agree that welding to a bearing is not a good practice and should not be promoted. I was not promoting the proliferation of this. I thought that my comment about the alternative would show how much easier and safer my method was. And there are other safe methods too. However, I have seen a lot of other designs/practices that scare the bejeesus out of me on this site and I would never try those things on my own car.

I, too, post for the further education of others and not for my own gratification. Even if we have different viewpoints, I think that both opinions are valid. I am not as confident as you that failure [url]will[/url] occur or that people and /or property damage is imminent. But to be ultimtely safe, any future builder should stay clear of this practice. I am also not as concerned about the legislators screwing up our hobby. There are a lot more shade-tree mechanics doing stupid things to maintain their factory built cars. Heck, I've done things in the past to keep my regular cars on the road that I'm ashamed of today. If anything, there would be new laws to prevent anybody but licensed techs from repairing any car, period. That will be a long way off.

But I'm not offering an opinion in this case, I am merely a messenger offering irrefutable fact.

https://www.google.com/search?num=40&hl ... _-_pK4x31Y



But that's not the subject, the subject is getting a home engineered car licensed initially - something that is very, very difficult in a number of countries. You wouldn't want the USA anything like Australia for that type of knee-jerk legislation, trust me.

BTW, if this was an Australian forum the very first response to the OP would be "you can't weld any steering components by law, period, end of thread".

First off, thanks to all that have shown concern for what they saw in the last pic.

I have to admit I did not expect this response, when, all I intended to show was that not all Miata shafts are build the same. I had remembered reading posts where the method of pushing the bearing back on the shaft did not seem to be working and thought it would be good to illustrate a possible reason why.

As to the bearing tacked to to the collapsible housing, my bad for ending the post that way, with no further explanation, and having it come across as 'the way to do it'. That was not my intent.

When I was lining up the the column. I need to located the extended shaft in the housing and since I could no longer use the factory bearing (yes it is 16 mm), I picked up what was available Princess Auto. Ok, not the best solution but it did serve a purpose and allowed my to continue. All the bearing had to do was line up the shaft in the housing. I do intend to add a rod end where the shaft enters the engine bay.

As for the claims that failure is guarantied (at some point?), and steering will fail, Chuck has already answered that for me. There is really no load on the bearing/welds (yes unfinished). For augments sake, should the weld fail not much of any thing would happen, as the housing has been reattached to the chassis, so, if anything I might notice a bit of slop on the column but the steering shaft would not be effected.

This is heading down the road of another topic regarding welding a shortened case hardened steering rack. Here I took the advise of others to heart and had my rack cut and tapped by professionals, as this is a critical part. I do not feel this is in the same league.

There is no "augument's sake", there is no "should", there is only "will", it is a given - I only hope others contemplating ever doing similar get that.



As that statement can not come with a 100% guarantee then I consider you are risking the property and well being of others everytime you drive. Further, you are risking the well being of the hobby I enjoy most in my life.

Ironically I was reading this article last night; http://www.caranddriver.com/features/th ... es-feature
.. and noticed that of 4 cars, 3 had serious issues, 2 had failures.

Woeful and clueless home engineering solutions isn't something to stand behind once you have been informed just because you "might" get away with it, I urge you to take your responsibilities to others seriously.

So, Cheapracer, your not offering any explanation as to why it will fail (from what load). Instead you use threateneing fear tactics and throw out instults like wofeul and clueless. This is not contructive, and does not add to your credibilty. It's also not appreciated as you don't know my thought process (though I have tried to explain it here). I have already explained there wil be another bearing a mear inches down the shaft. I'll gladly post an up date once its installed as you don't seem to be getting that.

Ok, lets not wait for the bearing to be installed. here is a shot of how things look now along with where the bearing will be (not a great shot but should illustrate well enough).

So please explain why the weld would fail. What load is the bearing and there for the weld seeing. The housing is rigidly mounted at both ends, the shaft is rigidly mounted either side of this bearing. There is no bending on the shaft, just slow rotation and torque.

Again should it fail, what would be the resulting failure. The shaft is still supported, same with the housing. The way I see it, I could take that bearing out now with no consequence (the shaft would rattle in the housing when it's disassembled).

If there is something I'm missing to justify bold claims of impending doom I would like to know, as I do take our hobby seriously.

i'm with cheap here,

this is a risky practice weldin an extremly hard surface with a soft rod like mig wire, first the penetration of the weld into the bearing is suspect as this is a dense material and the mig weld will take on some of the character of the bearing material and become brittle, i am surprised that the welds didn't just fall off the bearing.

having said the above, i have to ask the question, why not add a sleeve to the column end and locate the bearing in it and mout the sleeve to the chassis?

Hey Chris,

Just tell everyone that you designed the welding on the bearing that way so that it could fail in event of a front end collision allowing the steering shaft to deform more easily to provide extra driver protection.

Bill

Thanks Bill, I need that.

I have to back Cheap up on this one and I can clearly see where he is coming from. Regardless of of what other support the shaft has it is never acceptable to weld a bearing . Mate it will reflect on your whole job which, having read your build dairy, is going quite well. You are lucky to be able to weld steering components, here, like in Aussie, no welding end of story.
Bruce

I also DO NOT recommend welding bearings of course, however to remove a stubborn bearing race, a common technique is to run a bead of weld around the inside of the race. When it cools, it shrinks the race, and it falls right out. I have done this with a TIG several times with complete success. The material welds very nicely, though you can see various colors of material in the welds come to the surface. To even have a chance of making a sound weld, i am sure all kinds of post weld processes would need to be used involving quenching, tempering, etc.

Could a mild steel collar be welded in place to contain the bearing?

Come on guys, this is not an application similar a u-joint bearing transferring 300 ft-pounds of torque running at 7,000 rpm. Nor is it a wheel bearing supporting 800 lbs of weight running down the highway at 900 rpm hour after hour.

If I read your comments correctly, you are saying that if I weld a bearing to a tube and then just put it on the shelf in a temp/humidity controlled chamber and let it sit, say, for 10 years, it will have failed when I take it out or inspection? I can say with 100% certainty that it will not.

This application is closer to the latter scenario than the two prior references. I would be more concerned about welding the shaft extension than the bearing welds.

Yep, welding of steering components are taboo in many states and parts of the world, and with good reason. It is just not a great idea. But we Locosters still do it, at least most of us do. We shorten steering arms (ala Stakers), we cut and weld steering racks (not me!), we extend the steering shaft (I sleeved the joints), most all of us build our own control arms (guilty)and some evren fabricate uprights for goodness sakes. Not to mention we make our own brake caliper brackets and the list doesn't end there. Any one of these actions would be cause for rejection in many places that have annual safety inspections. Should we not build our cars then?