I've just finished installing a rebuilt steering rack, along with new shocks and ball joints. Success....my shark feels better even without the alignment. One question, and I may be too quick on the draw here because I have not had an alignment: My left turn signal will not cancel before I reach center. I have to slightly oversteer to the right for it to cancel. Will an alignment take care of this?

 

If alignment is done right it might. There is dimple in rack that should be used to lock the rack to center during job. This will ensure rack is dead center. Also when special bolt to lock rack is used it will isolate all parts upstream from rack. This could mean resulting settings are slightly more accurate since there were less moving parts involved in the process. Normal method is to lock the steering wheel. At minimum what I would do is I would center rack with that dimple and then lock the wheel. Hole to look for it is covered with plastic plug that can be rotated out. If wheel is not after alignment was done it's easy to set it to desided position also.

 

That's controlled by a cancelling cam on the bottom of the steering wheel (see pic). Is your steering wheel centered when rolling straight on a flat road? Centering the wheel is part of the alignment or after alignment adjustment. This is essentially unavoidable when replacing the rack, even if you carefully lock down the steering wheel and use a rack centering bolt, because the relationship of the rack center to coupler splines is not the same rack-to-rack.

Sounds like yours is off-center quite a bit. Crude adjustment is done by removing the steering wheel and shifting it as needed then fine adjustment is made by turning the tie rod adjusters equal and opposite amounts to change the center without affecting toe. You want to keep the tie-rod adjustment to a minimum.

Also, as I recall, the steering knuckle coupler has twice as many splines as the steering wheel end, so if you find that moving the steering wheel on its splines leaves you off 1/2 tooth, change the coupler position instead. A pain, but it could avoid having to use the tie rod adjustment.

 

On the subject of steering wheel, I tried to replace my wheel but cant seem to get a socket to line up on bolt. The stock wheel makes it impossible to remove nut. What special tools do I need?
86.5

 

Standard 27mm socket on a 6" extension w. a 1/2" ratchet always worked. A magnet helps to control the thrust washer, for it is tight in there ....

 

Mike: The nut is straight shot on my 89, with an extension as Garth indicates.

 

The steering whel is not straight. I'll remove and reposition. By the looks of it, that should do the trick.

 

You can fall into a real 'tug-of-war' game over this one ... the wheel splines allow ~ 2x the movement as do the universal splines at the rack: to get things back to ground zero and correct, the rack must be centered by the dimple visible in the front inspection hole as noted earlier - a pointed M12x1.25 bolt will lock it on center. This will eventually allow correct centering of the front end geometry via the tie rods when an alignment is done. If this causes the car to meander in a circle now ... too bad ... it must be aligned.
If the steering wheel was previously centered correctly, then remove the pinion side of the steering shaft universal, level the wheel and reattach the universal.
At this point, if the universal does not correctly mate with the groove for the lock bolt, the shaft end of the universal needs to be repositioned, or a spline moved on the steering wheel side .... it is no picnic, for on rack rebuilds ( as mentioned) the pinion replacement wrt the dimple appears to be random.