Our F85 Power Tour Project

[PhillipM]

I don’t think it was chronicled in this thread but we were having a problem with our ididit column. While someone was driving it would be really loose in the tilted position and even at times would snap back up to the top. After a short call to the factory they wanted us to send it back so that they could warranty the parts out. While I wasn’t too excited about removing the column it did give us time to do some rewiring that we wanted to do and also add a new custom tachometer. So, this is all leading into a very scary thing that happened last night driving the car home from work on the 101 headed south out of Scottsdale, Arizona.

I was driving in the far left lane going about 60 mph when all of the sudden I went to adjust the wheel and I had nothing. Not even a little bit of steering. (You could basically spin the wheel as if it were one of those cheap video games and it would go around about 100 times.) So as I started to freak out the car started to slowly drift to the right cutting off person by person over the next 1/8th mile, receiving a nice honk and an arm full every lane I took over. Luckily and amazingly I made my way across three lanes of traffic without hitting a single thing and now I am approaching the right shoulder where there is a small lip and then a steep hill leading down to the on ramp for the freeway. The front wheel hit the small rolled lip and bumped along it and kept me on the road and yet still away from traffic.

So, I am now sitting on the right shoulder of the freeway uninjured and with all the original paint still intact. First I pull off the horn cap to see if it was something up there even though that didn’t make sense. After seeing everything still tight up there I hopped out and opened the hood (which was difficult because I was still shaken up). I didn’t see anything right away but reached in and turned the wheel while watching and that’s when I saw it. The Borgeson joint had slid off of the bottom of the column! I didn’t install the joint but my Dad did and he said that it was tight. According to Borgeson we should have filed a small flat edge onto the spines to give the set screw something to bite into. Has anyone had this happen or know of it happening?? I didn’t get much sleep last night as I lay in bed thinking of all the bad things that could have happened, like a 10 car pile up as I sideswiped everything and everyone in sight! I guess it is better to be lucky than good sometimes. This weekend we will go over the rest of the car again with a fine tooth comb to check every last nut and bolt that we can get to.



Sorry for the lengthy post but if you have taken the time to read it I hope that you will take the time to check your stuff every once in a while!