Steering Rack Bearings

[jjeffries]

I removed the steering rack from my 183k mile 82 SC this weekend to facilitate replacing the fuel lines. With excellent guidance from the threads of Tim Hancock and KTL, I diassembeled the rack, and was glad I did so; the grease inside the rack was degraded and both bearings were scratchy and nasty.

Tim's thread provided the bearing sizes I would need: HK 1712 for the upper needle bearing, and 6202 for the lower, open ball bearing.

The 6202 is easy to find (ex, NAPA) but the HK 1712 not so much. I was about to order from Amazion but remembered the link in Tim's thread to Bearings, Motion Control, Power Transmission, Pneumatics | E.B. Atmus Co., Inc.. That stands for E.B. Atmus, Inc, which I realized was in Springfield, MA, nearby to my NE Connecticut home. I therefore snuck in a quick trip up there this morning and found a super-cool, old-school industrial supply house with rows and rows of bearings in their Victorian era red brick building. A lady who was on the phone arranging to ship a large order to Tennessee told me afterward that while they ship all over the world now, sourcing bearings is much tougher than in the past, and that it used to be most of their customers were local. For those who don't know this part of the world, it used to be home to all kinds of great industry (including bearings themselves: Torrington, Timken et al), and while some still exists, it's only a shadow of it's former self.

I will go out of my way to not just support local businesses, but to visit and get to know them a little bit, if possible. And while my order at Atmus was tiny (maybe $25 for the bearings and a tub of high quality synthetic grease), I was quietly happy to avoid contributing to Jeff Bezos' net worth.

Atmus did happen to be out of the HK 1712, but when they ordered one for me I suggested they get a dozen more for other guys from this board who I hope will call them. I dealt with Gordon, very nice guy.

[Autoban]

If you took your steering rack apart you may need new retainer rings. I had to fix my rack and ended up buying 250 of these rings (MOQ). Here is my thread: http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/830842-play-steering-mechanism.html http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-used-parts-sale-wanted/835113-steering-rack-retainer-rings.html

Juergen

[brp914]

Well, thanks to this thread I'll hopefully have some bearings and retainers soon. For the HK1712 there are quite a few mfrs. I selected SKF, USA because I recognized the name. Turns out, they would be from germany and take 8 weeks. The Atmus salesman suggested a japanese supplier with a location in atlanta that had stock.

[brp914]

Well, got my rack apart after receiving bearings and rings. But I noticed my rack ('84) had HN 1712 rather than HK 1712 needle bearing. The HK1712 I bought looks like it would work, but my existing HN1712 looks very good, so not messing with it. The ID and OD are the same, but the HN needles were maybe 1mm longer.

Another thing I noticed is what seems to be a design flaw. The pressure block presses the rack against the rack bushings, but the flat rack face is opposed to the round bushing, so the load is not dispersed. So a wear groove forms in the rack bushings. So I pulled the bushings and will rotate them 180. Seen below.

[jjeffries]

Gents, my rack rebuild has an issue. Despite putting it all back together with everything where it came from, and the rack initially having a great feel to it, when I added the flange that connects to the rubber coupler, that immediately caused binding. I went back thru all my steps a couple of times, always with the same result. This happened without using much torque on the nut. I installed the rack in the car, "hoping" it would loosen up. I got my rebuilt engine into the car and started a couple of weeks ago and have done a couple of hundred miles (only). The rack is still too tight, as the guy who aligned it on Friday also noticed.

Any thoughts on why tightening down the input flange would cause extra drag in the rack? Something that could be fixed with shimming? It sems like it would need a shim on TOP of the pinion shaft (because the nut in question is pulling the shaft upwards), but there's no provision for that. The dimensions of the new bearings were all correct and I used a good synthetic grease.

Thanks, John