my944

Me very trusted mechanic has said that my rack needs to be replaced and I wanted to know if:

1-Anybody has done this by themselves
2-Is anything besides for the most basic tools needed for this
3-ANY other input

Thanks in advance for the help!!!

Best regards,

Jeremy
Dreams of chocolate melting rapidly

Mike S

Yes you can do it yourself if you are moderately mechanically inclined. I would rate this a 6 out of ten in difficulty. Nothing technically difficult but a little time consuming. You will need a pickle fork or something suitable to remove the tie rods(you can bash them out with a hammer if you are replacing them, but i don't recommend it). You will also need an allen wrench for the pesky line at the back of the rack(there is an update for this now, which replaces it with a normal bolt head). The most difficult part is usually pulling the steering knuckle from the rack. Mine was rusted so a little prying with the screwdriver was necessary, but it came off eventually. There was a great article on this in Excellence a few months ago. I think 944-garage also used to have a procedure but it is temporarily offline. It's pretty self explanatory, remove the sway bar first and the proceed from there. I would also get a new reservoir at the same time since it has a filter inside that is not replaceable. I ended up replacing mine with a junk yard rack for $100 and haven't looked back. 30,000 miles later and its still leak proof and works perfectly. Just make sure you find a low mileage one if this is the route you are taking.

Devildog2067

Don't forget the crush washers--mine leaks like a **** because I forgot to put one of those back in, and I decided it wasn't worth 5 hours of my time to try and stay ahead of a $4/month leak.

I used a regular gear puller on the tie rod ends and had no problems.

dermass

wheres the best place to get a new rack. are the rebuilt ones worth the time/effort, or do they end up failing prematurely. whats the usual price comparison between new/rebuilt. yadayadayada.