gruffalo

Hi,

when I jack up one front wheel, I can rock it side/side, a lot. This causes instability in the car.

Both ball ends of the tie rods are good.

At the inner tie rod ball ends, I see a up/down movement. It appears that the "piece" that comes from the internals of the rack, and connects to the tie rod, is not sleeved properly to the rack housing.

It's hard for me to explain this for me, limeted by school English as I am, so I've attached a photo.

There is no horizontal movement, all the looseness at the road wheel comes from the vertical movement at the inner end of the tie rod. I guess there ought to be some sort of bushing at the end og the rack, that would prevent this.

photo

SharkSkin

Your rack bushings are worn. Rebuild/replace the rack.

Hoyo

Den ser jo ren og pen ut....

gruffalo

ikke sant?

Garth S

Pull the boots back from the rack to expose the inner tie rod end. Manipulate the tie rod shaft in all directions - there must be no free play in the inner joint. If there is, replacement is necessary.
Push up/down on the steering rack: if there is noticable vertical movement, either the 4 mounting bolts are loose or the bushings are worn ( as Dave mentioned).

gruffalo

Garht S: I have basically done what you suggest, and the answer is that the play takes place inside the rack, unfortunately. It may turn out that the recent rebuild was focused on hydraulics only, since the 4 rack mounting bushings vere toast too.

Garth S

I have a spare rack assembly - and having looked at it, there is zero play between the external housing and the 'rack' rod in any perpendicular direction from its axis ( the 'rack' is the gear cut ~30mm diameter one piece center shaft). The end seals/bushings are inset ~ 70mm from the housing ends - and IIRC, they are grease seals for the rack. The high pressure fluid seals are placed further inboard. ie, the rack would hold pressure and operate if the outer bushings were worn or missing.
However, even if this were the case, it is difficult to see adequate movement between the rack and housing to allow the degree of horizontal movement that you have at the wheel(s). The rack rod is ~ 80cm and has ~ 4 cm of solid inner ball joint tightly screwed into each end. The maximum deflection would be 2 mm over half this length (44 cm) - the hypotenuse of this triangle equates to a fraction of a mm change in effective length: not enough to permit significant steering angle changes.
I'm guessing that the large movement is due to the four mounting bushings: if your rack assembly is not leaking , try replacing the bushings. If I had to do that now, it would be attractive to lathe cut them from polyurethane rod stock. The diameter is ~25mm, and OEM height is 25mm - but 20mm would bring the rack closer to the crossmember, and it would be firm!