FredR

Mike,

Sounds to me as though your problems are pretty much as I suspected.

Adjusting toe-in does not cure slop in the steering axis but it sure changes the feel of the steering [not too surprisingly]. With minimal toe the car turns in quickly but feels somewhat twitchy, with more toe-in the car feels more stable but requires more steering effort- did you increase toe-in by any chance?

A few years ago I changed out the track rod ends because of boot failure even though there was no slop in the steering. Never thought about it again until a year or so later when doing my annual inspection/maintenance when I found something just as you describe in your earlier post. On the driver's side there was noticeble play in the steering [3/9 axis] and it was the inner joint that had gone- one could see the rod moving in and out of the rack with no movement on the steering wheel. There were no signs of this that I could detect whilst driving but then I was not pushing the car too hard either.

As I then found out one cannot purchase an inner joint without the outer joint and ironically the price difference does not amount to much either [at least I now have a pair of spare outer joints with good boots]. What surprised me was how quickly the inner joint had deteriorated and thus replaced both sides and their gaiters [with hindsight what I should have done the first time].

Rgds

Fred