182 Dangerous Steering and some knocking too!

[clio182nurburg]

Hi all,
My missus' 182 has developed some seriously dangerous steering. Sometimes when cornering well or if you hit big tramlines in the road the steering goes kind of light and basically the car understeers for a meter or two until it goes back to normal. Its knocked for a while somewhere and I haven't found the source nor did the M.o.t pull anything.
I have to solve this otherwise she will send it to the scrapyard!
for some reason I thought the balljoints/wishbones were 1 item, my memory is terrible!?
Sunday I'm going to have a look.
Ill just start with power steering fluid check and try to get a look at those rack bushes I just read about, I'm not sure that alone could make a car drive this bad though!
Any ideas?
I put 172cup front shocks and 182 cup rears shocks and cooksport springs all round on it 2 years ago.
The car really bangs over the shitty roads we have round here. Engine lovely, car dead. Send help.

 

[MicKPM]

As there was nothing obvious found at the MOT, ball joints/tracking arms/bushes, then I'd have the cars geometry checked.

If that doesn't show up anything untoward then I'd thrown some cash at the steering rack bushes.

 

[mctw]

Wouldn't explain the knocking, but tyres and pressures?

I've got Cooksports on with standard shocks and they do bang a bit on poor roads!

 

[clio182nurburg]

Update time,
tyres not the best, pressures ok
Car still utterly terrible to drive. missus says the steering is 'loose'
steering rack bushes seem ok. Don't really see how the rack can move much in the bushes as there is a raised section either side of one of the bushes. there is a little noise inside the rack but not sure.
Got some new genuine wishbones on the way as I don't want to break the cars up for parts just yet.
Ill get it tracked after that and see if its drivable again then report back!

 

[iamjoel]

don't bother tracking it until it's on the ramps or stands and checked the track rod ends, tie rods, rack bushes and ball joints etc i had a similar thing and tracking did nothing but waste money, find the problem and then track it after you've checked/changed the rest, i changed all of those above and it was ball joints in the end that fixed it, tracked 3 times and wasted money really, tracking does nothing but put correct toe settings..