Bad Rack and Pinion? Causing steering to pull?

[Scuba75]

Today I wrapped up my front end refurbish on my '93 wagon, or so I thought. After replacing all four struts, inner and outer tie rods, steering bellows, lower ball joints, and the sway bar links and bushings, (also a full timing belt water pump job) I took her in for four new tires and an alignment. I jumped on the freeway after, and it was pulling real bad to the right, worse than before the alignment. I drove back to the shop and spoke to the tech, who insisted he double checked everything. We took it for a drive, he drove it. He put the car back on the lift, and after hearing a knocking sound while moving the tires left to right, right to left, (I heard it too) says it's the rack and pinion that's bad, and that the alignment it good. Honestly I had a feeling it had an issue because I had heard that sound when I originally started working on the car.

So my question(s) is, will a good alignment still pull on the highway if the rack is bad, and is it possible that it is a mount or bushing that's bad, and not the whole thing? I don't seem to be loosing any power steering fluid either. I just spent over $1000 in parts and several days of my time fixing up this car, and really don't want to dive into a big project like replacing the rack and pinion already!

[Legacy777]

It's possible the power steering rack bushings are shot, which could cause the rack to move around and could affect the alignment. It's easy to check the bushings. You just need to remove the bushing caps and see if the old bushings are gone/dissintegrated or not.

Getting new bushings in can be a pain in the ass....I'll warn you on that.

[Scuba75]

Do you think a bad rack, besides the bushings, will cause it to pull like this? I'm not to familiar with the inner workings of the part.

[Legacy777]

The rack is basically just gears, so if the steering wheel feels smooth, I would first look more at the mounting points and bushings vs. the rack itself.