Greg Foster wrote:Over the weekend I took my elan out for a spin along some nice back roads twisting and dipping. It felt fabulous!
I was feeling a bit overconfident and broke the rear free of the road on a right turn. In overcorrecting I slipped off of the road with the right front tire while turning hard to the left. No harm to the car but I dropped into a hole , not deep but enough to cause a jolt. When back up on the road I found the steering wheel was tracking with centering at 2-0'clock and the car was steering squirley. After a visual inspection showing nothing broken or loose that I saw I limped home not running over 50 MPH as above that there was a shimmey and the car would steer left under accelleration and right during deceleration.
Back at the shop I immediately jacked up the car and did a thorough inspection. Nothing visually bent and I haven't checked centers and points yet. I did remove the rack and dissasemble to make sure there was no damage. There was more left/ right play at the steering wheel, maybe 3/16" heavy at the outer edge.
I removed grease and started looking and measuring.
See next.
Greg, To get more response maybe you should have started your own thread.
I'll address your bad steering geometry in this post. You have obviously bent something, highly unlikely that anything is bent inside the Steering Rack itself.
If the Track Rods are not bent then it's likely the Wishbones are bent; They are designed to be sacrificial before the chassis is damaged.
Take the wishbones off, both top wishbones should be the same & both bottom wishbones should be the same, overlay them, is one or more damaged?