Problem: Stiff spinning steering modules and hard shifting between gears

(Quick little story – while bringing this beast into its location, I fell and got pinned under it for a few minutes. It is amazing how much having your chest compressed effects your ability to call out for help! 🙂

OK – onto the next issue… Its steering wheels were pretty stiff, and if you tried to give them a good hard spin they would come to a halt within a couple of turns. Removing and disassembling them was easy. Turns out the problem was that the old grease in them had coagulated/thickened so that it was about as viscous and sticky as cold honey!

Getting the grease out of the barrel and off of the shaft and sleeves literally took ~10 minutes (for each module) with some rubbing alcohol, elbow grease and rags. I had a friend helping me (Sean) and we each tackled one sterring wheel each.

After getting that old gunk out, a quick application of some light lithium grease on everything solves that problem – the wheels will now spin for at least 10 turns easily.

For the shifter modules, I just applied some powered graphite to the shifter “ball” at the opening of the shifter and after a few shifts to get it all around, the shifts are much easier now.

Solution: Cleaned and lubricated the steering modules, lubricated the shifter modules.

Note: One of the steering modules has a broken shaft/cone, which caused the wheel to be off-center, and it was being held in place strictly by the force of the retaining bolt that goes through the entire assembly. I managed to get it a bit straighter than it was before, but it still is broken internally. Not sure if I want to go through sanding down the two halves to try to get them melded or epoxied together – I am afraid of shortening the cone too much and causing problems. The wheel works and the game is playable, so I might just leave it as it is.