E30 steering u-joint help

The steering on my $500 E30 has a ton of slop in it that I've traced to the steering u-joint just above the rack. On some E30s there's a large nut around the column under the dash that, if I understand correctly, tightens the 2 pieces of the column and when cranked down can take the slop out of that joint - I'm guessing by pulling on the joint a bit and changing the contact points in the joint. Unfortunately my car has the one-piece steering column, so that's not an option. Any ideas on how to fix this without replacing the u-joint completely with a new one ($250 for the part, plus probably pulling the rack and drilling out a couple rivets and replacing with bolts and locking nuts)? If I loosen the clamp at the firewall and pull on the column while retightening it will that help?

If its really the u-joint, Weld this (or something similar) on the shaft in place of the rag/rubber joint to trade a few $ for a bit more of your time fabricating. You can easily tell if that is really the culprit by getting under the car and putting your fingers before and after... have a buddy shake the wheel.

If you have a car with the 2 piece shaft & a huge lock nut in the interior near the firewall and what you have is a "rattle" feeling then tightening the nut a little will likely help (assuming the rag joint above the rack is fine).

The steering guibo is fine. I can see and feel the play in the lower u-joint from above. I have no welding equipment or skills, and it would be difficult to use a simple steering ujoint in place of the standard piece, which seems awfully overcomplicated to me anyway.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

pigeon wrote: The steering guibo is fine. I can see and feel the play in the lower u-joint from above. I have no welding equipment or skills, and it would be difficult to use a simple steering ujoint in place of the standard piece, which seems awfully overcomplicated to me anyway.

My E30 had a u-joint with a rubber/thread rag sandwiched in the middle to soak up vibes. Then, it went thru the firewall in a rubber boot - then into another shaft (on splines) that had a large lock nut with a rubber/nylon bushing. In my case - tightening the nut to compress the bushing worked fine to rid me of the play. The rubber in the ujoint was shot so I welded a universal in place of it. If you can't really do that - you are left to pony up the $250 and replace it if its worn out. Earlier cars had a different setup - I do not know when the cut-over happened but it was a cleaner setup with just a ujoint and a bearing. Maybe you could retrofit?

Unfortunately for me I have the one piece shaft, no lock nut. The rubber/thread rag/guibo is fine, at least that's one piece I won't need to replace.

This is a hotlinked pic of what I have on my car - the joint to the left in the pic is closest to the rack and what's bad on my car.

Hell get rid of all that. https://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?catname=&item=1-2737

Theve got seval joints and shafts ect. cheap to and there nice needle bearing units to.

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