TR6 Redesigned Steering Shaft TR6 restomod

[MikeRVA]

Greetings Fellow Members!

If you're a restoration purist, please stop reading here. I'm sure my question and surrounding detils will only bring tears to your eyes.
I recently bought a restomod TR6 that I'm in the process of cleaning up and improving where I can. I've run into a bit of an issue that I'm struggling to resolve and thought perhaps somebody out there has already tackled it or is just more clever than I about steering. My car has a Chevy 4.3L small block six. Nothing crazy for horsepower, but it does fill up the engine compartment and things are tight. This includes the steering shaft. The original modifier had taken the standard shaft, spunt it around, added a few welds to include a u joint snaked through the center header pipe curve. Clearance was almost non-existent - maybe you could slide a piece of paper bebtween it and the block. Anyway, everything was pretty rusted and the only way to get the header out (or likely change a spark plug) was to cut out the steering shaft. Didn't want to replace what I thought was a bad and unsafe design, but now I can't figure out how to do it better. Using all 3/4" DD shafting, I've added two additional U joints, 3 himes and one double Universal to try route it over top of the header pipes and take a nose dive down (using the double U) to the steering box. The angle is just too steep. Attached a couple of pics to help visualize. Just wondering if anybody out there has had to tackle this problem and can recommend alternatives. BTW, I have thought of going under the header, but that seems to have even more obstacles

Thanks!
Mike

 

[mgNOT]

Mike, You are on the right track, but the double u-joint in the center of the two shafts is installed with the center piece parallel to the upper shaft. This leaves 1/2 of the double joint doing all the work. The lower Heim support joint needs to be moved so the double u-joint has 1/2 of the total angle in each side of the center piece.
Dennis

 

[MikeRVA]

Mike, You are on the right track, but the double u-joint in the center of the two shafts is installed with the center piece parallel to the upper shaft. This leaves 1/2 of the double joint doing all the work. The lower Heim support joint needs to be moved so the double u-joint has 1/2 of the total angle in each side of the center piece.
Dennis

Hi Dennis, thanks for the response! Understood - the picture doesn't show it well but there's not of ton of clearance between that double U and the header pipe, but I'll see what I can squeeze out. Just to check my understanding, I should move the lower hime so that the center link of the double u is pointing more toward the steering box?

 

[malbaby]

Would moving the shaft over towards the inner wing and having the lower heim joint further up the shaft to lessen the lower angle help?
Also do you have any column collapse incorporated?

 

[mgNOT]

Mike, What I'm describing is that the angle between the upper shaft and the centerline of the middle of the double u-joint
should be the same as the angle between the lower shaft and the same centerline. The idea is that the joint on each end of the
double unit is the same, and neither is beyond the max. of 30-35 degrees.
I would say to look at British V8 and some of the build journals for examples.
Dennis