Hello there!
I bought my Vehicross used about two years ago and loved it for the longest time. But I am having a lot of problems with it lately regarding its steering behaviour. About one year ago I noticed the steering becoming softer and less responsive. After a while it actually felt like it had a play of about 1.5 inch of turning the steering wheel without any action. My VX started to pull me sideways, depending on the road profile, sometimes all of the sudden to the right, or in worse cases all of a sudden to the left into the incoming traffic. My tires( Pirelli Scorpion P zero, R18/255/55 ) are wearing out rappidly. I had the VX re-alligned 5 times within the last 12 month, with the result that it just loosened up again after a few weeks. After many resultless allignments by different mechanics I finally found one, who was really listening to me describing the problem and started to look more into it rather than just realigning the vehicle.He said that the steering gear has a lot of play and needs to be replaced. I only drove the VX on the road and it has only 48.000 miles on it!? Does anyone else have this problem? I trust the mechanics cause he improvised tightening the steering gear up somehow (- warning me though that it is not a permanent solution!), and the car drove well for a while. But now it is slowly falling back to the old habbit.The shocking part is, he said a new steering gear cost about 1600 Dollars without the labor. Does anyone know whether I can get the part cheaper anywhere else? Is it a Vehicross speciffic part or is it the same as the Trooper steering gear? Hope to get some helpful advice from you guys. Thanks, Arne