steering rack feels notchy - fixed!

greg bradbury · 01-23-2007, 07:25 PM

During my recent front end upgrade I decided to grease the steering rack in an effort to remove some of the notchy feel that it has. With the rack removed and on the bench I removed the cover plate that houses the spring which holds pressure on the rack and thence pinion. Removal of the spring and plunger enables you to fill the cavity with grease and when the plunger is reassembled the grease is pushed in - easy. While I had the spring out I compressed it fully in the bench vice and it measured at 15mm or so. I then measureed the depth of the plunger in the rack housing and also the depression in the cover plate. i.e. where the spring normally sits. These two measurements added to 14.4mm or so. So it appeared that the spring was being fully bound when the cover plate was tightened up.

I ground about 2mm off the end of the spring and reassembled - nice and smooth. The steering is now much smoother.

The good news for anyone wanting to check this out is that the cover plate is easilt accessable with the rack in the car. Just remove the large front bash plate and there it is.

Hope this helps someone with a similar problem.

Regards,
Greg.

randywebb · 01-23-2007, 09:30 PM

does this mean you can grease the entire rack w/o R&R?

greg bradbury · 01-23-2007, 09:37 PM

yes it is possible. I did it with the rack out by it would definitly be possible to do it from under the car. I put 3x fills of the depression (after removing the plunger) as a guess, although it probably ended up coming out the ends of the rack. I assume that after 24 years the old grease would be pretty dried out.

I used some HT bearing grease that I had.

rnln · 01-23-2007, 11:33 PM

so if I lay under the car, head toward the rear of the car, leg sticking out of the front bumper, looking upward. The plate you are talking about is the one facing down right at my face, right?

greg bradbury · 01-23-2007, 11:44 PM

right

hcoles · 01-24-2007, 05:36 AM

it is interesting that the spring was in coil bind, probably not the original spring or something else was wrong

Thrasher · Thrasher's Garage

I tried this last night, but that plunger (or puck) stays in its original position after I removed the cover w/ spring, and there's nothing to grab it with to pull it out.

Short of some sort of suction cup device, how could I remove that puck w/o R&R of the rack?

EDIT: Follow-up. I carefully grabbed the little "nipple" on the puck with a good set of longnose pliers and pulled it out.

From there, I suggest filling the void with grease, and then re-inserting the puck to plunge it into the gearing. The first time I did this, the grease oozed out of the screw holes, so I re-inserted those to plug it up.

Between each of my three grease fills, I went up to the steering wheel and moved it lock-to-lock. After I did this, I realized I could've just left the keys in the ignition and moved the steering rack by hand while below the car (duh).

Anyway, my rack feels much smoother now, so I'm happy with this relatively easy lube job. The only b!tch is getting the cap/spring back on thanks to the A/C line coming out the bottom of the smuggler's box.