steering column help

[lockdownTF]

hey guys!

I'm planning on building a motorised RC version of the star wars clone turbo tank which uses ten wheels. after looking at a few similar wheel layouts I found that most people used 3 steering rigs two at the front and one at the back so I decided to do the same on my moc. but I also wanna see if its possible to power the wheels on the steering rig to a motor so my creation won't be forced to rely only 4 of its ten wheels for locomotion. I've built a cheap prototype to see if I can achieve that but I've hit on problem here are the pictures of what I've made so far from the top and botom:

so the problem is I was planning on powering the wheels through the two towbar pieces (not sure what their proper name is but you put axles in them and tilt to a certain extent and still turn a full 360 degrees) anyway when I link the two bars together the axle connecting them won't stay lined up over one hole so I need to know how to successfully connect some gears to them so they can link up to a motor turn and still steer in both directions.

[bricky300]

You can use my Steering from my buggy and modify it for your use

The '' towbar'' pieces are universal joints

[lockdownTF]

as best I can tell thats rear wheel drive only with front wheel steering? what I want to do if possible is to have two motors one that will power the steering function and one and one that will power the wheels attached to that steering rig.

EDIT: wait yeah I see how it works now. yeah thanks this looks really helpful.

Edited August 2, 2011 by lockdownTF

[lockdownTF]

ok so I've just built up a new steering rig the gears work and can now run to the steering wheels through the universal links. the problem started when I added in the motor and tested the steering. the problem is is that motor moves the steering bar much to fast. so its either turning fully left or fully right with no middle grown and no way to reset the steering to neutral since when you release the stick the motor stops rather than resets to a neutral postion.

heres the pictures of what I've built so far

I tried use a work gear setup to slow the motor down this is too slow and means your spending allot of time steering and trying to steer the other way or make the wheels go straight.

[vmln8r]

Here's how to do it using either a fairly rare part or rubber bands.

You can also use normal springs like below:

IMG_5324 by mahjqa, on Flickr