Here's what you did not see.

The front axle uses L-shaped kingpin/wheel spindles. When you smack some immovable object with a front wheel, the L-shaped kingpin/spindle puts all that force on the bottom of the axle, causing it to twist, thus throwing out the front geometry. Wheel alignment consists of three items. Caster, camber plus toe in/toe out.

When you twist the axle, you change the caster which makes the behaviour of that wheel different than the other wheel.

Commonly on these, the link that ties the two wheel spindles bows-where as it starts out reasonably straight. Also, the bottom arm on the wheel spindle that was hit tends to bend down. It all can be straightened, but the parts are cheap enough. It is possible to twist the axle back too, but that takes a hard whack.

has somebody else been driving it? if so you don't know what they may have hit. Did you ever hear a rip sound? if you have sector gear it may be off center especially if it will not turn as tight both directions. If you have the half moon sector gear you can turn it one direction all the way and look at it? it should be centered when straight and all the way up or down when turn either direction all the way.

If you can't find nothing I would just take the steering wheel nut off and reindex the steering wheel until the next time it suddenly get off again, and when that happens you should be able to see something. especially if you mark the sector gear in a known position.

***"the "rack and pinion" so to speak, is centered, so I did not "skip" a tooth or two."***
That is NOT exactly a decisive way to tell whether a tooth has jumped, but usually, that works ok. The big gear is the SECTOR gear, so called because it is a "sector" of a circle. The small gear is the pinion, so, "sector and pinion" if you will. The best way to evaluate whether the pinion has jumped a tooth, or if something has become bent/twisted further "down stream", is to drive the tractor straight forward on a smooth, hard, preferably level (no side gradient) surface, taking careful notice of the "clock position" of the steering wheel. You can even mark the steering wheel with a small piece of masking tape and a corresponding piece of tape on a stationary surface if you don't trust the memory. With the steering wheel in the position you determined to be "straight forward travel", count the teeth on the sector gear and put a permanent mark on the sector gear center tooth. If the sector gear center tooth aligns with the center teeth/tooth of the pinion gear, the pinion gear has jumped maybe one tooth of the sector gear sometime during operation. You may have been making a hard turn when this occured and simply did not notice the click or bump that accompanies a tooth jump. But, if the center tooth of the sector gear lies to one or the other side of pinion gear center, you have bent something in the steering components further out toward the tires/wheels. Because the tires seek a "point of equilibrium" (regarding rolling resistance), bending or twisting a steering knuckle or spindle will change the "toe setting" between the left and right wheels. When the tires find the new point of equilibrium, the sector gear will be at a different orientation, and consequently...the clock position of the steering wheel will be off center as well. So, the first thing you need to do is determine whether a tooth has jumped, or not. If a tooth has jumped, do as rcmoser says and remove & re-index the steering wheel (which by BTW, your owners manual says to do also). The fact that Craftsman includes a small detail like that in the OM implies (to me) that this is actually a fairly common issue. Of course, on the factory end of the equation, this gives Craftsman a big lever to deny warranty claims for the off center wheel!!! They just say "you hit something, warranty does not cover that!". I'm being a bit pessimistic by including that in the post, but I've seen lots of "disclaimers" used by OEMs to deny warranty considerations, so I figure they might have out that in there for their own ulterior motives. If you find that the sector gear is actually centered where it should be, you might want to look very carefully at everything about your steering links, spindles, axle and mounts before changing the steering wheel orientation.

I must comment on the plentiful explanations you guys give us amateurs about tractor repairs.
If somebody can't figger out how to find their problem, or how to fix it, with your advice, they'd best take the machine to a repair shop!
And, i must also say--this a wonderful place to learn stuff! If they had taught us things in school, as clearly and concise--i might have gone on to bigger things, instead of ruining my health from doing auto body and painting. All we ever got, in high school as far as instruction, was a smattering of info and only the real egg-heads could ever figure out what they were teaching!
Thanks to all here who help us dunder-heads! Where would us folks be without your fine help? Why, we'd be looking for somebody with a pickup or trailer, to haul our machines down to a high-priced repair shop, instead of doing it ourselves!
Thanks, guys, we really appreciate everything you all do for us! By: Rusty Jones

Thanks for all of your help!

rcmoser, I am the only driver...and I was sober. ;') I remember hitting a small root (1 MPH?) and the tractor stopped in its tracks and I almost went over the steering wheel. This was earlier in the Summer and I didn't think much of the incident till I blew a rear tire bead last week and almost fell off my seat. At that point I did a safety walk-around to prevent another tractor accident and noticed the alignment problem.

I checked my Ram truck wheel alignment manual so I can communicate reasonably regarding caster/camber/toe in-out.

I placed the tractor on level ground...centered the steering wheel, counted the sector teeth...took a long hard look at each wheel and found a tiny problem. The left front wheel is straight but the right wheel is just a bit turned to the left. (toe in?) It doesn't seem like much but I will have to wait till tomorrow to see if I bent a rod underneath the tractor or the wheel spindle is bent or the frame where the kingpin is attached is bent.

Then decisions, decisions. Five, Ten or Twenty pound sledge and just where the impact point should be. Just kidding. ;')

I would rather replace than smack and rebend metal (except a rod) because I believe I will cause even more damage than I already have. I might even fatigue or crack the cast iron parts.

OK, but if you did not count the teeth on the sector gear with the steering wheel in the position that it wants to assume NOW when you drive it straight forward, you are probably missing the point I was trying to make in my first post. The fact that you state now that you positioned the steering wheel straight, and found the LF wheel to be straight, and the RF wheel turned just a bit to the left, does not prove that something is bent! It just means that you arbitrarily moved the steering wheel to where you consider it should be, and then find that the left and right steering tires are not at EQUAL angles, and the right tire is turned just a bit to the left. Well, that is exactly what I would expect to find if the pinion gear had jumped one tooth. And if you arbitrarily moved the steering wheel to match the position that it wants to assume when driving, you would find the the LF & RF tires are angled inward EQUALLY. Try to re-read my suggestion in the first post I made. From what you are describing, you might not have bent something at all, your pinion gear is probably one tooth off (like, maybe when you almost went over the steering wheel??).

mownie..

Bingo...NOW I got you. The slight toe-in spread between the two front wheels might be normal and the pinion-sector gear alignment might be the only problem. No sense jumping to conclusions. My biggest worry would be excessive tire wear.

I was hoping that by suggesting you might not have read "hard enough" to get what I was trying to convey, you might end up addressing an imaginary defect. Don't worry too much about what might appear to be excessive toe-in on a machine that runs on turf. Most tractors appear to have a lot of toe-in, especially when the machine is not moving. In operation, with the dynamic forces imposing on the tires, the toe-in "look" magically seems to relax a bit.

I had to rethink everything. I recall that even when my tractor was new they designed the steering geometry so that it makes a tighter radius in one direction than the other which I really liked for tight landscaping features.
This made me rethink that "counting the sector teeth" may be meaningless.

I measured with a machinist ruler every angle of the front end using reference points. No rods were bent. Castor and camber were perfect.

Craftsman has this handy clip under the hood which when removed, let me reposition the steering wheel by one tooth. Everything is perfect alignment like the day I bought the tractor.

Thanks again everyone for your input and special thanks to mownie who prevented me from using "weapons of mass destruction" (the sledge) and totaling my tractor.

You are very welcome! Glad to hear that you pinpointed the problem, and in a very "well thought out" manner. Nice to know that Craftsman carried their end of the burden by providing a tool to "adjust" steering wheel index when needed. Rock on!

***"I was hoping that by suggesting you might not have read "hard enough" to get what I was trying to convey, you might end up addressing an imaginary defect."***
Boy, you only notice a goof when it's too late to edit!!!
That sentence above above should have read: "I was hoping that by suggesting you might not have read "hard enough" to get what I was trying to convey, you might see where you could end up addressing an imaginary defect." Not a lot of difference, except the first version almost sounds like I was "setting him up". I'll have to be more kareful :^)