RM1Sepex Build Thread

[RM1SepEx]

Wayne you are absolutely correct. The bellows just shows us how far the rod is extended externally. All of our measurements are based on the inner ball joint pivot point. (I don't have photos of yours! But the bellows show how much you cheated to the right.) It is off 1/2 inch from center or 1 inch from one side to the other. I have just a whisker over 3 turns lock to lock. I'd need to cheat the rack's position 1/2 inch of travel to make the position of the inner pivots equal. The rack has almost exactly 5 inches of travel, 2.5 inches in each direction of center. So if you set it so those pivots are in the same place relative to the LCA pivot point you have taken 20% of the travel to one side and given it to wheel rotation of the other.

The rotation to travel ratio is 540 degrees (1.5 turns of the steering wheel) / 2.5 inches of rack travel That means that for each inch of rack travel we rotate the wheel 216 degrees. If you "cheat that .5 inch of rack you now have 2 inches of travel to the right and 3 inches of travel to the left.

Right wheel rotation 216 x 2 = 432 degrees or 1.2 wheel rotations
Left Wheel rotation 216 x 3 = 648 degrees or 1.8 wheel rotations

You are also correct that in real,life few occasions occur to use full lock to lock use. However the design is flawed and the engineer in me wants/needs to make it correct. I'd love to see turning radius in each direction... the problem should be obvious if you need to turn around in tight quarters. It would be like my old dog, she found it very hard to turn in her non preferred direction! :-)

It's easy to fix, lengthen the "rack" or move it to the right 1/2 inch. I think lengthening the rack is easier... Factory 5 should move the rack on its jig.