Torque steer

[Chris5090]

Hi there,

I read mentioned on here that someone had had some anti torque steer washers made. I was wondering how these worked and where they fit? As the suspension is all out it seems an ideal time to fit some to my HF Turbo

Thanks - Chris

[Neil Lewis]

Hi Chris

The front wishbones each have two rubber bushes; one at the front and one at the back.  These tend to be a bit loose so the anti-torque-steer washers go on each side of the bushes, ie, slip a washer over the pivot shaft, put the bush on then fit the other washer.  Then, when you tighten the nut on the end of that shaft, the whole lot is pulled together to remove the play.  So you need eight ATS washers to fit the car.  Whatever you do, don't put them just on one side or the torque steer will be much worse :-)

The alternative (which is what I've done) is to buy a set of polyurethane bushes (a harder, synthetic but still flexible material) from Power Flex and put them on instead.  They're about thesame price as OE spec rubber ones and last forever.  PowerFlex also do bushes for the rear axle trailing arms which are well worth fitting too since that does the same job to the rear axle.

If you want to go the "whole hog", fit some spherical bearing top mounts.  The ball races in the OE ones wear out and cause the strut top to move about.  And they're very hard to find.  The sperical bearings come for both 8-valve and 16-valve versions and are about the same price as the OE ones.

Neil

[Chris5090]

Thanks Neil

I assume that the washers need to have an internal diameter the same size as the outside diameter of the inner bush tube then, so that they compress the rubber?

Thanks for the help!

Chris

[Neil Lewis]

The washers I've got were made by Barry Waterhouse (God bless him) and have a centre hole which fits around the slight widening of the original rubber bush where it joins the central tube, ie, the end of each bush isn't flat.

They were made in all different thicknesses.  Now that might have been by design but, since the Nylatron material is quite hard to machine accurately at small thicknesses, I'm inclined to think they just came out that way.  Without measuring them, I'd say the thickness range was between 3 and 4mm.

My advice is still to go with the Powerflex bushes which don't need the Nylatron washers.  Mind you those bushes aren't maintenance free though and will need stripping down and the central screws lubricating with Copper Slip every six months or so.

Neil

[Mark Webb]

My nylatron washers lasted 70K with no maintainence at all, sounds like a lot of trouble re greasing the inserts of Polys every 6 months! Didn't bother when I rebushed the rear   Di-deon on my Alfa 75 and Alfetta or the rear arms of the Grale. I wonder if the Poly bushes may be a bit harsh as well, I noticed a lot more road noise after doing the rear trailing arms on the Grale.
Whatever you do, retrack after fitting them, I thought just dropping the wishbones and popping in the washers would not matter, bald inner edges of the tyres 6 months later proved me wrong!
Which reminds me must do the tracking on the 155 after renewing the struts (I never learn ).

[Neil Lewis]

In my experience Integrale's need retracking every six months.  You may not notice it while driving around but you sure will notice the difference when it retracked.  Always go to the same place to have it done then you can be sure that what you get is the same as last time.

Neil