Mongo

Definitely not loose. Do they even sell boots by themselves for these types of joints?

Chalkboss

Yes, Roger has them. Very easy to do.

Mongo

Rack is going in tonight! I want this sucker done so I can work on the ATF line and drain the coolant for some G05.

Mongo

Help!!!!!

Which way does this bracket go to hold the starter harness?!

wpgshark

Does this help?

Mongo

Forgot to post these yesterday from working on the car the night before. Positioning the rack was kind of a PITA since I did not get the car high enough before removing the old one.

Getting the steering knuckle onto the splined shaft of the new rack was no cake walk either. I had to hammer it and use the screw driver to spread the clamp open more. Persuasion worked in the end but I dented up the knuckle pretty good, which I am not happy about.

Although, to take some stress off of the rack by letting it hang by the knuckle, I held it up by using some of the nuts that fasten the retaining plate to it.

Mongo

Lines and knuckle hooked up in the pic attached.

As for the dark pic, this is out it stands as of this morning and last night. I have not torqued the nuts holding the rack up to the 33 lbs/ft as required. I am having issues trying to keep the bolts from spinning that are fed through the crossmember.

Bill Ball

Hope you got the u-joint on the right spline. If you are off one spline, then the steering wheel will be off-center by half a tooth as that end of the shaft only has half as many splines. If so, other than remating the u-joint to the shaft, which generally requires dropping the rack, the only way to center the steering wheel is to offset the tie rods so the rack ends up slightly off-center.

Mongo

Can't I just re-center the steering wheel inside the car by removing it? On a side note I am bidding on a Momo M36 steering wheel to replace my original as I think it looks sharper.

Oh! I should also mention I have Roger's alignment tool screwed into the rack to keep it centered

Chalkboss

If I understand this I am pretty sure you can just pull the steering wheel and center it. I was off ever so slightly doing this job and this is what I did. Good job, you're almost there.

Mongo

Good because I want to get all that Prestone coolant out next and repair that line.

I am debating about taking it down longer to install mt 24 LB injectors and Ken's S300 chips too.

davek9

Hi Bill, I pulled one last night on Norbert, will be installing it Thursday/Friday night after cleaning up under there as tonight is our monthly Shark GTG, what a mess as it was leaking for a while

That misalignment happed to me on my Gold car, I was thinking for this install I would center the steering wheel and lock the rack at the "centering" spot.
Any suggestions will be much appreciated

Thanks,

Dave

davek9

No you can not, it will always be off center by a 1/2 tooth the rack must be dropped and re-connected like Bill stated above.

Mongo

Can you please explain this? If you remove the rack, you can turn the steering wheel completely around in circles to your heart's content as the shaft is attached to nothing but air until you put a new rack in.

Spline alignments are irrelevant unless you plan on absolutely centering it without removing the steering wheel in the car. Either way, my wheel is coming out for a replacement.

davek9

Please re-read Bill post, the splines are coarser on the rack fitting, if not set correctly you won't be able to align the steering wheel correctly unless you want to misalign the rack's tie rods off center.

Also the wheel need to be straight for the Turn signal mechanism.