My daughter recently took our 1990 Dakota on two round trips to a town about 50 miles distant. The day after she returned, I started to back the pickup out of our driveway and there was noise under the hood and the steering felt "funny". Before her trips I had found a loose bolt on a sway bar retainer and replaced it, so I thought maybe my job hadn't been a good one.

I had my wife turn the steering wheel back and forth as I looked under the hood and was shocked to see the steering column moving left and right as well as twisting. Underneath, I could see that the power steering rack and pinion unit had pulled completely away from the frame crossmember, and in effect there was no control of the front wheels.

I've got the steering unit off the pickup and have been in touch with Dodge who tell me that there was a Recall Campaign (#688) that addressed the tendency of the steering gear to pull away like this.

I've also found and purchased the parts used in the campaign from a man on eBay. They are the two big bolts and washers that pass through the bushings/insulators, two pieces of bent steel as reinforcement and two heavy oblong steel nuts, threaded to accept the bolts.

I'm going to have a man who does portable welding come to the driveway where the pickup is parked and see if he can do the campaign repair so I can get the pickup back on the road.

If anyone else has been through the recall, I'd appreciate any information that you can give me on the repair work. If anyone has this first generation Dakota (3.9 L 6 cylinder engine with "X" as the 8th digit of the VIN), better be alert. Dodge tells me that the recall work was done on my pickup in 1997 (I bought it used in 2002).

 

I had the same problem with my 90. I bought a little longer bolt & big washers, can get them from Home Depot. Used the big washers in front of the two heavy oblong steel nuts. This fix was good enough to get it to the dealer. What has happned is the oblong steel nuts have ripped thru the frame. Dodge will fix it free this happned to mine a year ago. If I remember right I had to file a little off the sides of the washers just enought to let them pass thru the hole where oblong steel nuts are.

 

Common problem on the early first gens, the dealer will have to fix it again for you, as it's their fault, not yours

 

your daughter was driving, that will give you nightmares for years.
the dealer will fix it free of charge because i'm sure they had a recall on that, check it out.

 

Thanks, all, for the replies. I'll be on the phone today to the dealer to ask if they will do the repair for me. I have all the parts they need, and have the steering gear off the truck and clean, so it should be a fairly straightforward job for them to do.

 

I telephoned the local dealer who logged into the Chrysler computer and found the same information as Chrysler gave to me. The dealer said I'd have to contact Chrysler to see if the repair could be repaired.

I emailed Chrysler and this is their reply:

"In response to your email regarding the recall, we would like to inform
you that your vehicle was involved in factory recall campaign # STEERING
GEAR ATTACHMENT which has been completed. Since, this recall is not a
lifetime recall; it will not be performed again by Chrysler free of
cost."

Looks like I have to get the work done at my own cost.

 

In the parts you have the square metal pieces have to be welded to the front side of the frame. The angle is very important the top needs to be angled back as much a it can. Too straight up and down and the steering will bind. May need to do some grinding on the surface where it broke thru to allow the peice to lay flush on it. When all is done i would still put a big washer behind/inside the frame.

 

I just found the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recall site on the Internet where there are detailed instructions for the repair. First you chisel-off the old nut - no problem for me because the bolt and the steel of the crossmember it was welded-to both pulled away. Then you hold the oblong nut behind the hole in the crossmember and turn the bolt a few threads into the nut and pull on the bolt to hold the nut against the inside of the crossmember while you tack-weld the nut to the crossmember. Then you get the bent piece of reinforcing steel and do a continuous weld on three sides of the piece to the outside of the crossmember (you have to make sure you have the correct left- or right-hand reinforcing piece) so the hole in the reinforcing piece, the hole in the crossmember and the threaded hole in the oblong nut all line-up. Then you run the bolt through the hole in the steering gear and the insulator in the hole, through the reinforcing piece and into the threaded oblong nut. The crossmember is then squeezed between the steering gear and the nut. Hope it works!

I fiddled with the reinforcing pieces, trying to see how they would fit on the crossmember, and can see that you have to be careful how you orient them and which side you use -driver or passenger (thanks, kahanabob). What I don't understand is why the oblong nut isn't drilled and threaded right through its narrow-side center. As it is, it is off-center both ways, long and short sides. May have to crawl back under the pickup for more fiddling.

The detailed instructions with helpful diagrams, are at http://nhthqnwws112.odi.nhtsa.dot.go...1V232-9876.pdf

 

Not to repete myself but this is very important, the angle of the rack&pinion. The top needs to be leaning towards the engine compartment as far as it can. The angle to the steering colum rod is within 1 degree of being to much. After the delear fixed
mine when I drove it home the steering would bind slightly. I had to make shims to put behind the rack and the frame below the bolts
to get more angle, it fixed it. FYI

 

The repair is done, and I have made an album of some photos of the work that was done by a welding craftsman who came to my driveway and installed the Chrysler recall campaign #688 parts on the crossmember.

After the welding work was completed (payment was $80 and a cold beer) I reinstalled the steering gear (150 ft-lbs torque on the bolts!) and took the pickup for a spin. There didn't seem to be any binding (fingers crossed) and the "cracking" feel in the steering wheel that I used to notice on turning the steering wheel slightly is gone.

The album name on this site is "1990 Dakota steering gear recall repair"