Rag joint question

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You guys are overthinking this.

Ford designed these cars to be put together by relatively unskilled labor with minimal knowledge as quickly as possible, so they built in devices to "dummy proof" the assembly process. The wheel has an alignment mark punched into it, that matches up with the punch mark in the shaft. The coupler has eccentric sized pins so the steering column flange can only be clocked one way. The coupler and box input shaft have a flat so the coupler only lines up one way. The sector shaft on the box has four mating ribs in the splines, so the pitman arm can only be installed in increments of 90* - and if it's wrong, you're not going to be able to hook up the linkage at all.

The Lares 201 application chart is huge, it fits many more vehicles than just the 71-73 Mustangs. It's also applicable to GM F-bodies (Camaro/Firebird) among other things. The metal shield they include is a safety device as well, and I remember seeing it on the 70's F-bodies. It's there to keep the steering column flange from disengaging the pins in the event of a coupler disc failure. It would also rattle like crazy, so maybe the clueless driver would have the vehicle brought in for service.

 
I agree with all you stated on the assembly. They had to make it simple and impossible to put together wrong or they would put together wrong. Assembly line issues are usually what causes a recall. Just recently at the BMW plant where my son works one of the assembly workers decided it was better to route a fuel line a different way. Cars were catching on fire before they got out of the plant on ones that had to be debugged. Instant recall.

When BMW does your interviews part of it is actually reading assembly instructions and doing a task. One of theirs is simply putting a wheel on install the lugs, torque and part of the instruction tells you to index the valve stem to a certain clock position. Has nothing to do with the function of the car just tests the ability of the person to read instructions and follow them to the T.

 
You guys are overthinking this.

Ford designed these cars to be put together by relatively unskilled labor with minimal knowledge as quickly as possible, so they built in devices to "dummy proof" the assembly process. The wheel has an alignment mark punched into it, that matches up with the punch mark in the shaft. The coupler has eccentric sized pins so the steering column flange can only be clocked one way. The coupler and box input shaft have a flat so the coupler only lines up one way. The sector shaft on the box has four mating ribs in the splines, so the pitman arm can only be installed in increments of 90* - and if it's wrong, you're not going to be able to hook up the linkage at all.

The Lares 201 application chart is huge, it fits many more vehicles than just the 71-73 Mustangs. It's also applicable to GM F-bodies (Camaro/Firebird) among other things. The metal shield they include is a safety device as well, and I remember seeing it on the 70's F-bodies. It's there to keep the steering column flange from disengaging the pins in the event of a coupler disc failure. It would also rattle like crazy, so maybe the clueless driver would have the vehicle brought in for service.
 Kind of what I've been trying to say, but explained much better. I had a feeling the Lares 201 would be used on many more applications, only makes sense to fit GM products as well, hence the pins being equal size. At least they will work as intended!

As for the pitman arm, exactly. I checked my spare to confirm my thinking. If the arm were installed 90 deg off, then the input shaft would of course be off as well and not line up. If it did, then you'd have like 2 turns one way and only 1 the other and that would really suck! For that reason, I had said that the box need be centered before installing.

 
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