1970 300 steering column/wheel not straight???

[Davea Lux]

Just drive it on the side of a hill so the engine's right side up. (Gonna be a pretty steep hill though.)

Once, long ago and far away before political correctness ruled the land, Chrysler engineers used to meet and enjoy adult entertainment and consume mass quantities of adult beverages. Well into the evening, a junior engineer blurted out, "our flat head six is hopelessly out of date". We have state of the art V-8 engines, so why do we still try and sell this obsolete six that was designed in the 1930's? Through the smokey haze, a number blurry eyes began to light up. And on this and several other similar occasions, the best six cylinder engine of the age was designed. Senior management was skeptical, many had helped design the flat head six. Others thought the idea of a six cylinder was useless in this modern performance era. Finally someone said, "this will be the perfect engine for our new Dart line of cars. The go ahead was given to produce the engine.

So on a bright and clear summer day, the first engines started to roll off the assembly line. A senior engineering technical specialist was impressed with this new engine. Then he decided to take some measurements, this thing will never fit in the Dart, it is four inches too tall! Much head scratching and consumption of adult beverages followed. Finally a junior engineer exclaimed "Too bad we can't just turn the darn thing on it's side!

He got a nice Bonus that year.

 

[D Cluley]

Just drive it on the side of a hill so the engine's right side up. (Gonna be a pretty steep hill though.)

Wouldn't it be easier to just put big truck tires on the passenger side?

 

[Fury440]

This is awful to admit but my steering column isn't straight and I never noticed it before.

Well I guess I'll never stop learning something new! After owning my car for 48 years I never realized my steering wheel was offset - so after reading this thread I had to check it out. I tied a rope from mirror to mirror such that it just touches the vent window frame on both sides. Then put a 4' level across the steering wheel and found about a 20 deg offset.

The rope just touches the wheel on the right side and is about 1" away on the left side.

I look upon this as a feature to make it easier for me to grab the right side of the wheel and haul my "man sized" body onto the seat without hitting the left side of the wheel. Poor man's tilt!

 

[Samplingman]

Question, does the tilt-telescopic wheel have the same off-set?

 

[MarPar]

Question, does the tilt-telescopic wheel have the same off-set?

good question...

 

[ceebuddy]

How should the tilt & telescope wheel not have the off-set?

A straight wheel (in the same spot) would require a totally different steering column with at least two universal joints which, as was pointed out earlier, would probably have cost too much.

As far as I know there are no different lower column covers only for T&T steering columns providing for a different angle.

 

[Ironwolf]

Well I guess I'll never stop learning something new! After owning my car for 48 years I never realized my steering wheel was offset - so after reading this thread I had to check it out. I tied a rope from mirror to mirror such that it just touches the vent window frame on both sides. Then put a 4' level across the steering wheel and found about a 20 deg offset.

View attachment 135796

The rope just touches the wheel on the right side and is about 1" away on the left side.

I look upon this as a feature to make it easier for me to grab the right side of the wheel and haul my "man sized" body onto the seat without hitting the left side of the wheel. Poor man's tilt!

Are you sure that the vent window frames and the mirrors are perfectly even ??? OOOPS ...

Don't forget it was built in the early 70's ..

 

[Fury440]

Ha! Back then we used string and rulers to make things square. The offset steering wheel is a design feature!!

 

[Big_John]

1" offset on a 16" wheel gives you 16 degrees in the USA

That metric system in Canada isn't all it's cracked up to be.....

 

[polara71]

Question, does the tilt-telescopic wheel have the same off-set?

Tilt does

 

[CBODY67]

I'd love to know why the Chrysler engineers did this.
As I said, I never noticed before, but now it bugs me. I'm sure I'll get over it but my wife noticed it yesterday with no heads up from me. I asked her to sit in the car because I had put some shims under the seat. She sat in the car and felt something was Crooked. Between the out of square steering wheel and the wavy glass in the original windshield it isn't as comfortable to drive as it should be.
The issue isn't with the column but with the column /steering box misalignment. Also the adjustability of the column is very limited and doesn't come close to making up for you misalignment.
Thanks all.

IF you really want to get to measuring, you'll notice that the engine is shifted to the right in order to clear the power steering gearbox (chuck). So it's not parallel to the rocker panels. This was allegedly done to equalize the weight between the front wheels on power steering cars.

The steering column has a slight angle toward the outside of the car, related to the mounting location of the steering gear.

One other side issue in favor of the engine angled toward the rh side of the car is that this puts a slight lateral angle into the front u-joint/transmission interface, for vibration reduction.

The "wavy" glass, one on each side of the windshield, is "normal" too. IF you key on it it'll really "bug" you, but if you don't notice it, everything's fine.

Saginaw Gear did built some Chrysler steering columns, all the way to at least 1980 model year. Just as Delco Radio did the search tuner radios, too. BUT they were all built to Chrysler's specs, not to GM's normal specs, with the Chrysler columns having a nicer feel of operation and better "guts" than what GM used.

Enjoy!
CBODY67