When I first bought my current car many years ago, it proved to be much more reliable than my first car. I felt comfortable driving it a whole state away. Oh yeah, moving up in the world. But it had one key flaw: the steering was always making this annoying thumping sound, especially at low speeds. I looked it up, and there was a service bulletin for this, as it was a known issue. A solution existed that didn’t require the shaft to be changed or anything like that, so it really didn’t matter. Right?
For years, though, I kept wondering to myself: if this is a known issue, I can probably ignore it, but what happens if the shaft actually is going bad? That sort of thing can and does happen. It’s probably thumping because of the design flaw, but what if it’s also thumping because it’s going bad?
Well, this past year has been a year of preventive maintenance and fixing things that annoy me. It comes at a price, but I’m pretty happy rolling on quality parts, so I finally decided to change the intermediate shaft.
I’d never really known how it all worked, but it makes sense when you get in there. The shaft of your steering wheel attaches to this intermediate shaft, which goes outside of the passenger compartment through a big poofy rubber grommet that keeps water and air out, and connects to the steering rack. The first thing I noticed was that there were some rather unusual wear marks on the joint inside the cabin. There were two grooves along the bracket that appeared to be machined, but at the edge of those two grooves, there appeared to be these ruts smashed into the metal (see post picture). Something about that didn’t look right.
Mind you, that doesn’t mean very much. The U-joints going bad is what you really want to watch out for. But remembering that this car has over 200,000 miles on it, I decided this was not normal, and likely it was just time to change the whole assembly.
It wasn’t terribly difficult. I made the mistake, as I often do, of not putting enough smackdown into my initial efforts, playing it safe and wondering why the shaft wouldn’t come off the main steering. A few youtube videos later, I took a crowbar with a hammer to it and it came right off. Who’d of thought? Anyway, it’s all changed now, though I did get my marks off a bit on the splines, so the alignment is off. It needs an alignment anyway.
One test drive later, and absolutely no thumps from the rack.
Partly, I just enjoy writing about these experiences, but also…friends, don’t be lazy. I put up with that crap for years. I was scared to deal with it, for no other reason than I had never changed one of these before. Years (YEARS!) of thump, thump thump on turns, especially backing out of spaces or pulling into them. Little, subtle, annoying, sounds. That’s no way to live. And in the end, it took me less than 4 hours to change. The part itself was around $240 for OEM, while the aftermarket equivalents were all re-manufactured junk that cost nearly as much. It was an updated part, designed to avoid the thumping entirely. So I’m kind of kicking myself, wondering why in the world I didn’t just take care of this years ago. Laziness. That’s why.
Likewise, I also put up with a power steering leak for years because I was scared to work on that, too (don’t judge me). It was like an $80 part and a few hours of work. But in the intervening years, the fluid leaked all over that wall of the engine compartment, and it collected quite a sludge. Perhaps I’m just a clean freak, but this drove me nuts. If I had changed that around the time I first bought the car, it would never have been a problem.
You can put things off in life but you may as well get them done so you can enjoy the fruits of that labor sooner. The price many years ago would be almost exactly the price I paid this year, except that I spent all the intervening years dealing with stupid issues.
Don’t be lazy. Make life good now when it makes sense.