1997 Lincoln Town Car STEERING PROBLEM

Hi Nick. Welcome to the forum. This sounds like a tight ball joint. As such, it will check fine when you're just looking for looseness. I would suggest disconnecting an outer tie rod end, then turn the spindle by hand. The way you're describing it, you should find it almost impossible to turn the bad side by hand. Tight ball joints were somewhat common on older Ford trucks but I don't remember hearing of anything common like that on the bigger cars.

A tight joint in the steering shaft should turn easy for 1/4 turn, then hard for the next 1/4 turn. If in doubt, you can disconnect that too to see how easily it swivels.

Caradiodoc

Boy, that's an unusual problem to have a tight joint in the steering shaft on a Ford. It's more common on other brands. I would head to a salvage yard to get a different steering shaft. That will let you see how it comes out, then you can disconnect yours on one end so you can swivel it to see which joint is binding. It really is irrelevant anyhow as you can't buy those u-joints for the shaft. You have to buy the whole shaft as an assembly.

Caradiodoc

I thought you found a tight joint in the steering shaft.

To test the steering gear, the service manuals usually have a test that involves removing the steering shaft and linkage, then using a torque wrench to measure turning torque on the input shaft. That is pretty hard to do in the car though.

Caradiodoc

Thank you for sharing that. I'll add it to my memory banks. Apparently this is a somewhat common problem on your model since the guy knew what to do about it.

Caradiodoc

You're going to have to stick your head down there and look around. There could be a plastic shield that is mispositioned and rubbing. The clue is that would still make noise when the ignition switch is turned off. If it only occurs with the ignition switch turned on, it could be a relay but you'll have to poke around to try to feel what is clicking.

Caradiodoc

Thank you for that information. It is common on any car for power steering fluid to burp out of the reservoir when turning the steering gear without the engine running. Fords have a real lot of trouble bleeding that resulting air out. There are all kinds of special tools on the market now for doing that.

One thing I neglected to mention is the clock spring under the steering wheel. That's a wound-up ribbon cable inside a plastic housing. It makes a solid electrical connection to the air bag. Those clock springs are just long enough to handle rotating only slightly more than the steering system can go from full-left to full-right, and no more. Some of the tests we talked about involved disconnecting the steering shaft from the steering gear. Once that is done, you're free to rotate the steering wheel endlessly in either direction. Likewise, you can operate the steering gear by hand too. If you disconnect the steering shaft while the front wheels are straight ahead, then, for example, turn the steering gear one revolution one way, then reconnect the steering shaft, the clock spring will be turned one revolution off-center when the steering system is recentered. Now when turning fully one way, the ribbon cable is either going to wind up tight and tear off on one end, or it's going to unwind too far and fold over on itself. In the first way, the Air Bag Computer will see the break in the circuit and immediately set a fault code for "Open Squib" or "Open Initiator". It turns the system off and turns on the red warning light to tell you. In the second way, the same thing will happen, but not right away. It will take repeated folding over on itself many times before the ribbon cable cracks.

The way to prevent this damage to the clock spring is to always have the steering system centered when the steering shaft is disconnected, and to use something like rubber bungee strap to hold the steering wheel from being turned. That keeps the clock spring centered, then simply put the front wheels back to straight ahead when you reconnect the steering shaft.

If you still end up with a damaged clock spring, new ones always come locked in the centered orientation with a warning label through the middle that tells that it is centered. Everyone I've seen so far has a pair of locking buttons that prevent accidentally turning it off-center Those locking buttons are pressed down to unlock them by the steering wheel when it is bolted on.