I owned a 73 v6 capri many moons ago and had steering shimmy. We finally found
out that one of the 2 bolts that held the rack to the frame had loosened. We
locktited the hell out of the bolt and torqued it to spec and never had the
problem again. I was second owner of the car with about 40k on the clock.
Replaced the car about 6 months later with a Lotus Europa S2 '71 (but that is
another story , for another day)
Bill Schmidt cs rx7 kc reg
>>> "Larry Steckel" <lorenzoscribe@hotmail.com> 11/26 8:57 AM >>>
A friend of mine was a mechanic at a Mercury dealership when Ford was
importing that "Capri". He said that each car took almost eight hours to
prep. Most of that time was spent tightening chassis bolts that were loose
and inserting bolts into susupension mounting points that had been left out
during manufacture. One car had three bolts missing from the rear subframe,
the other one was loose.
Those cars also had numerous drivability problems and the same steering
shimmy that afflicted my brother's 72 European Capri. My friend was
complaining to me that he had replaced everything and could not solve the
shimmy. The customer was ballistic. I told him to put a set of urethane
bushings on the steering rack and that would solve it, as it had done on my
brother's car. He couldn't do that under warranty, but did shim the
bushings to within an inch of their lives. The shimmy went away. The owner
called Ford and touted my friend as the only mechanic in the United States
who could actually fix that piece of doo doo.
Shortly thereafter two engineers from Ford came to the dealership and asked
my friend how he had fixed the shimmy. They hadn't been able to figure it
out either. (Obviously not autocrossers ) My friend asked for some sort of
compensation from Ford for telling them the fix. The engineers said that
wasn't possible. So, my friend told them that we was working on flat rate
and that they were costing him money. He tossed them out of the shop. He
never did tell them how to fix the problem.
Larry Steckel
>From: "Phil Ethier" <pethier@isd.net>
>Reply-To: "Phil Ethier" <pethier@isd.net>
>To: "Larry Steckel" <lorenzoscribe@hotmail.com>, <NeonACR1@aol.com>
>CC: <autox@autox.team.net>
>Subject: Re: More Street Modified News!
>Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 22:43:54 -0600
>
>From: Larry Steckel <lorenzoscribe@hotmail.com>
>
>
> >Remember that there also was a front wheel drive version of the "CAPRI"
>that
> >was built in Austrialia.
>
>
>The "flexible flyer". One autocrosser discovered that the factory bolt-on
>hardtop was worth the extra weight, just to put some semblance of torsional
>rigidity into the chassis.
>
>Phil Ethier Saint Paul Minnesota USA
>1970 Lotus Europa, 1992 Saturn SL2, 1986 Chev Suburban
>LOON, MAC
>pethier@isd.net http://www.visi.com/mac/
>
>
>
>
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