Steering rack rebuild.

[MandM]

Just hit it a bit harder Martin, it will move with a blunt drift and club hammer.

Ian.

Will take it to work and give it thump with a copper bar tomorrow, thanks Ian

[bullstarz]

Give it a good soak in WD40 or equivalent. Use a brass drift as it wont deform the thread.

Did mine a while ago as long as you use PAS fluid to help the new seal slide into place there shouldn't be an issue.

The only pain I had was replacing the nylon seals in the spool. No idea how to get them all to fit. Ones fine, but the rest have to pass over the other groves which just end up stretching them out of shape. Warm them up and they stretch nicely but stay stretched.

I couldn't find any instruction to replace them. However, i did find a bit in one manual that said don't ever remove them, whoops. To late,

Les M came with the solution

Put the seals in allmost boiling water and let them soften, have the spool housing ready to refit and lubricated with lots of ATF. Fit all the seals to the spool and then replace the spool back into the housing as soon as the seals are fitted, the seals will contract as they cool. This is the only way that I have found to get then to shrink back to size. These are the seals that the ROM say's should under circunstances be removed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not a easy job, heating the seals up did soften them up, for about a second. Soon as they came out of the water they went back to there normal state. Getting a nylon seal over several metal lips, that are larger than the seal its self, is not easy. Coupled with the fact the whole thing is covered in AFT,wearing gloves, pushing the seal goes in to a whole new zone. The whole time trying not to over stretch, even though you have to stretch the thing a bit, not twisting it and seating it correctly in it little grove is time consuming.

I found the seal would sit proud of its channel. Close inspection and you could make out the whole seal had twisted through 90 degrees. What should have been the side was now the top and bottom, which were slightly wider.

The seals did seem to be over stretched, but over cover them and the housing with ATF and slowly squeeze the spool into the housing and the seals seem to get compressed to nearly their original size. The result is a firmer , but not too stiff, steering and the shaft now has no side wards play or end float. This should now stop the PAS system being self cleaning and having the it's ability to change it fluid it self.

When link to the electric power steering pump it all work better than ever.

[MandM]

Thanks very much for the help Ballstarz, I could not find any info on fitting the white spool seals either, but as you said the ROM says No?, strange ?, may bottle it and just change the top seal as less ribs to stretch over, may also try making an ali sleeve with a taper to squeeze the seals back into shape, or tiewrap it for awhile.
would be nice to hear from others who have fitted these.

Thanks for help again

[DJT]

M

Like Bullstarz, I made this 'mistake' when I rebuilt my first rack, but I got away with it in a similar manner. When I did my next one (just fitted to my current Stag) I followed the manual and left well alone, so I have a set of the white rings still in their bag somewhere in my stash of bits.