Lessons Learned

[Ozark Lee]

I changed out the power steering rack on my daughter's 944 yesterday with a rack I picked up on eBay. The whole project was going great until I had the racks side by side while swapping the tie rod ends out. The replacement rack had inner tie rods that were 2" or 3" longer than the original rack. Fortunately the inner tie rods on the original rack were OK so I set out to swap them out.

That is a bear of a job since they peen over the back of the inner tie rod into a notch in the rack itself. I had to grind out the peened over metal with a Dremel tool to get them off. It wound up taking me a couple of extra hours messing with them.

I then coerced the steering column joint back onto the steering gear and remounted the rack. Bad idea! The hydraulic lines must go on first since you can't get to them once the rack is in place. I wound up using a floor jack to hold the rack up so that I could make hydraulic connections and then to further hold it so that I could maneuver the steering column joint back on.

All said and done it wound up taking me twice as long as I figured - about 9 hours - but the result is great. No more leaks and steering that works.

...Lee

[Voith]

you probobly got the newer rack..