Shop Truck Steering﻿

Shop Truck Steering

7/7/2016

We put so much research and design into our front and rear steering components that we feel they are deserving of their own section in our blog about the ‘Shop Truck’ build. Stemming from our experience on our old ‘Grey Cruiser’ we knew that the steering had to be strong enough to be able to turn over sized tires, with a lot of low end torque pushing through deep snow with independent suspension. Nothing worse than breaking a tie rod end in hip deep snow so we came up with our own custom designed front and rear steering components that a little overkill but seems virtually indestructible.

We started with your typical Saginaw power steering pump bolted onto the side of our custom frame.
A pitman arm and drag link goes to the custom center tie rod plate which is attached to the frame with 2 over sized swivel joints. These swivel joints hold the center tie rod in place and allow the complete unit to swivel from side to side. Attached to the center tie rod plate are the actual inner and outer tie rod ends. This set up works great, even for dry steering 37” Mickey Thomson tires.

The rear steer uses much of the same concept as the front steering components. As you can see we went with a PSC hydraulic steering system that is bolted to either side of the giant center tie rod plate. As the plate is pushed side to side, the inner and outer tie rods push and pull giving us our rear steer which turns independently of the front. Also shown is our self centering ram which is basically an automated ‘on / off’ switch for the hydraulic steering pump based on distance traveled.

All components are designed, cut and fabricated in house. Aqualu Industries not only manufactures high quality aluminum bodies and accessories for Jeep, Land Cruiser and Samurai but we are also a full service aluminum fabrication shop with 2 CNC router tables. Definitely helps when designing your own components for custom projects like this.

*Disclaimer, Aqualu only builds vehicle for in house abuse, we do not offer build services.*

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