Changing a power
steering rack is always messy and very annoying. Unfortunately, the
power steering rack had finally
bit the dust so another one was needed. It was either that or start heading out to the gym for them friday night arm blasts.
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| 86-87 above, 84-85 below |
I seem to enjoy ordering parts from rockauto.com as of late. It's just so simple to click, and it's was very cheap compared to the local part stores. It was a remanufactured unit, so i'll need to pray nightly that it'll still be working the next day.
To remove the unit is pretty straight forward if you know what to do. One thing I prefer doing, is remove the rack hard lines during removal and installation. Doing this will allow the housing to rotate so that it will clear the frame rails. If you don't do this, then you'll need to lift the engine. Make sure you plug up everything, so no fluid spills and no dirt sneaks into the housing.
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| passenger side shown on left, driver side shown on right, |
I also received some rack bushings. For some reason, these parts came up for the RWD Corolla. As you can see one
bushing is a bit off. The passenger side bushing is D shaped similar to the driver side bushing but larger. The parts guy will probably tell you that's what it comes up in my computer. But if you've graduated from preschool, then you know that square doesn't fit into circle. Or in my case shape D doesn't fit into shape O.
Since the passenger side bushing is hard to come by I needed to improvise a bit. Yes the filipino is starting to flow out just about now.
Rummaging through the back I found a silicon hose that's similar in diameter and cut to the proper size.
Wrapped it around the housing, and waddaya know, it fit perfectly. It's much denser, hence stiffer, than the old rubber bit. This makes me wonder since no makes a polyurethane upgrade for the power steering rack, this could be a nice cheap upgrade. Now the
Chinese side is tugging on me to sell these bits for cheap and make a bunch of money to hide in my mattress. But for now this will be temporary until I find a suitable replacement, or maybe take it for a couple of test runs until I feel confident that it's a good replacement.
When swapping over the
tie rod ends, count the amount of turns that is required to remove the tie rod. Remember this number and install on to the new rack, with the same amount of turns. Once all done your alignment won't be too far off, so you can get to the alignment shop for final inspection.
Once everything is secured make sure you bleed the system to get all them nasty bubbles out. If done correctly you should have nice easy
steering feel. Great for
parallel parking and one handed drifts.
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