Well, i pulled into the parking lot at work on friday, and all my powersteering fluid ended up in a puddle as i was backing up. Got it home and saturday afternoon took a look at it. Looks like the metal collar that screws the 2 halves together unscrewed somehow and the rack seperated...eeek. Looks like the rack had a rebuilt sticker on it, so it was done at some point, but there was about a tablespoon of fluid in the driver side boot, so i figured i would try a reseal myself. Ordered the kit from travis, and damn....its already in the mail today...the guy is awesome. Anyways, a few pictures for those who don't know what a rack looks like on the inside (comon now, steering rack...lets keep it clean ;D ), here you go. Really not much to them at all. Had it out of the car in about 45 minutes.

Here you can see the metal screw collar that came loose...oops


And the innerds.

 

That threaded collar is supposed to be staked to prevent it from backing out. I'm guessing the rebuilder didn't stake it after reassembling.

If I could offer some advice, be extra careful removing and installing that seal down in the bottom of the tower casting (the one the pinion goes through). Remember that on the new oil seal, the flat side goes down while the cavity side points up. Just remember with oil seals, the groove/cavity side goes toward the higher pressure side which generally is the side exposed to fluid. The pressure helps clamp the seal onto the shaft tighter basically.

I'm redoing mine after hosing up that seal the first time I rebuilt the rack. To make life easy, I fabricated a seal installation tool out of some 1 1/4" stainless tubing. The tubing is pretty heavy wall, I'd guess it's at least .120 but since I don't feel like finding it to measure, just take the seal with you to a metal supply place that sells tubing and find the closest match for the diameters of the groove. This was the closest thing I could find in the remnants pile at the metal supply place, stainless is obviously overkill but it looks pretty at least.

Anyway to get it to fit into the back of the seal, you need to grind it down a little bit on the outside diameter and then increase the inside diamater enough as well as chamfering the edges so as not to damage the seal. It only needs to be driven in about 5mm or so. You could of course machine the same out of aluminum if you have access to the equipment or even get the tubing turned if you have a lathe. I took the ghetto route but it just needs to fit without tearing up the rubber parts of the oil seal. To create a depth stop I just got a 2 piece shaft collar and tightented that down on the piece of tubing. They do make installation tools for specific seal sizes that fit into the groove but as they're a specialty tool, if you don't have a lot of money to burn, it's a lot cheaper to just make one yourself. Admittedly building the tool is slightly overkill but that seal is somewhat of a bitch to get to because of the casting.

For easy removal, if you go to Harbor Freight they sell either an inside seal puller, or a headlight/drum brake spring hook that seems to work pretty good getting the old one out without being a major expense.

Even if that was a rebuild, it's better looking than the one I bought at autozone and took back. The Autozone one was rebuilt by ATSCO who supposedly do pretty good work, but I didn't like the fact that instead of bead blasting/clearcoating it they just shoot the whole thing with cheap black paint afterwards. Just made me wonder what else they were trying to hide, plus it's hard to tell where things are leaking when it's painted black.

On a related subject, does anyone know of places that will bench test racks for you? I for one would rather find any leaks of my own doing before putting it back in the car like I did last time. (Buggered that seal that I made the tool for this time around apparently). Alternately, does anyone have a quick and dirty how-to on building your own bench tester? I guess any cheap PS pump with appropriate line adapters hooked to an electric motor could work if it is a bit involved.

 

sweet, thanks for the info. Hopefully i will get around to tackling this later on this week.

 

Z3bra.. several interesting thoughts there. Naturally I've had trouble with that tower casting seal too and and like you, created a few tools along the way. Getting the seal in was not so much a problem as getting it out. I finally just gave in and pressed out the lower pinion bearing to access it. My biggest screw-up was in dealing with one of the guide rings at the passenger end of the rack. That little nylon ring can be extracted if done carefully. On my first one, I ignorantly broke it and without that ring to support the shaft, the seal failed after a year or so. No one seems to have the piece, I don't think even Travis has it either (maybe he will set me straight on that tho).
Personally, I go at these things with a sort of determination will trump lack knowledge, skill and talent. Not the best approach, but sometimes that is all I have. Have chatted with a couple lof local hydraulics guys on thier approach. The first thing mentioned was to get the shaft re-conditioned and pointed me to a local machinist who does the polishing work for them.
I think all Porsche guys do steering racks either sooner or later. I've actually bought a couple of other racks in hopes of finding an alternative to the POS that comes with our cars. Someday I must get around to trying them. Good Luck ...Bruce

 

Travis ships quicker than any vendor I've ever used. Even internationally!

 

Yea, and he emails you a tracking number immediately. If all vendors would do that, they would end up spending a lot less time on the phone when customers call wondering where the heck their package is, has it shipped, yada yada yada.

 

The plastic sleeve is a pre wiper used to keep crud out of the seal since it is located at the very end of the shaft. If you clean your boots and keep them in good shape it is generally not needed. A touch of grease where the shaft goes in will help as well.
Our kits do come with the two plastic seal backings that the seals sit on. We did make the seal backing on that end to have a bit smaller ID than the OEM ones. This should act as a stop to keep the rack from overextending due to up/down movement in the shaft. With the complete kit installed (with new seal backings) and the pre wiper sleeve left out, we haven't had a problem.