Steering rack replaced

[entirelyturbo]

Thought I should keep you guys updated.

And yes, most of you are going to think I'm absolutely insane, but I'm still keeping this car for the long haul, I need it badly (running the Subaru Challenge next weekend), and I'll feel better about it.

So I was hoping to do a successful steering rack change last weekend (ended up getting the original one for BC/BF Legacies, and returning the BD/BG GT one I had ordered). I had everything I needed, the new rack, a new set of Whiteline bushings, manifold gaskets, a shit-ton of ATF, a junkyard power steering pump and the reseal kit, etc. I got off work Saturday and headed straight home to start. I had planned for the whole weekend so I could take it slow and do it right, since I've never changed a rack before.

Well, everything went pretty smoothly, barring the exhaust bracket that bolts to the transmission somehow snapping in half and leaving the exhaust in its entirety dangling only by the rubber hangers , and then I went to unbolt the rack brackets off the crossmember.

The driver's front bolt (driver's side, toward the front of the car) that holds the circular shaped bracket on the rack broke off as I was removing it

In an instant, I realized that this little project was not going to be finished that weekend

I left it for the night, and went to Sears Sunday to get a screw extractor set (yeah, you all know where this is going), and when I got home, I broke the screw extractor off in the bolt fragment. I proceeded to smash my driver's front fender in with my bare fist (I still have some temper problems I guess, no worries, I hope to finally get the body straightened out next summer), and left it for the night.

Monday I was too busy and didn't even touch the car, and last night, I tried fiddling around with it a bit. Soaked the little bastard in PB Blaster and tried hitting the extractor fragment in a counter-clockwise direction hoping to break it loose. Tried pounding the whole thing upward, hoping the welds would break on the nut and I could just slip a new nut in it. I tried drilling into it again, but with the screw extractor stuck in there, I can't.

Keeping the Subaru Challenge in mind, and the fact that my XT has again decided it doesn't want to play DD by having a charging problem and developing ANOTHER exhaust leak (I'm really tired of it doing that too), I broke down this morning.

Ordered a brand-new crossmember, which thankfully isn't as brutally expensive as I thought, $220 something my cost. I did order it overnight though, so I gotta tack on another $30 for freight.

So... I should have it tomorrow, and I'm gonna hopefully try again this weekend. I don't work, so I'll have both full days to do it. I'm gonna find a way to support the engine from up top, and I'm gonna take off the old crossmember. While it's off, I'm also gonna reseal my oil pan, as it's developed a leak in the past 6 months or so. What pisses me off about that though is that I changed the oil first thing when I got home Saturday, so I have 4.5 quarts of completely unused oil in the pan that are gonna go to waste

Then, assuming everything goes okay, I'm gonna install the new crossmember, put the new rack on, put everything back together, make sure it drives okay, have it aligned on Monday (and ask the alignment shop to do my -1º camber in the front like Tire Kingdom refused to do), and go on with my life, including the Subaru Challenge on the 21st.

After all this, I plan on redoing the A/C, having the bodywork done and the car painted, redoing the bad wheel bearing in the right rear AGAIN , and driving it until it doesn't drive anymore.

[kidatari]

Damn, I know the feeling man.

I was wondering if you could lend me some insight- I have an 04 STI rack modified to work with a 2.5RS steering column. Do you think this would work in my 91 SS?

[entirelyturbo]

My understanding is that you will need to use an STi crossmember along with the rack. That's what our good friend Hardy (THAWA) has said in the past anyway.

The crossmember came in today, so with some ass-busting, I should have this all worked out over the weekend.

[scottzg]

paaarty!

I did the same thing. Broken rack bolt. I took it out with a giant drill and put a larger bolt in with a nut on the other side. Wasted about 2 hours on that bastard. It's been fine for 30k now though.

[entirelyturbo]

I did the same thing. Broken rack bolt. I took it out with a giant drill and put a larger bolt in with a nut on the other side. Wasted about 2 hours on that bastard. It's been fine for 30k now though.

That's what I should have done the first time

[Bheinen74]

Yeah. last weekend I went to the junkyard to pull off a low mileage (84,000 miles) steering rack off a 91 to go on my 94 TW, as mine has bad tie rods inner and outer, and the rack is getting some miles on it. We broke two of the half clamp bolts, even after blasting it. They werent coming loose. No biggie, right. Who cares about the junkyard cross member........

Haven't tried to remove the one in my TW yet, but after reading your original posting, now I know this is gonna have to be a careful removal...........I am gonna blast them every day for a week before i try removal. Maybe since the car is pretty rust free and it has some oil leaks, those bolts wont be corroded into the crossmember.

[IronMonkeyL255]

I got mine about halfway out before saying 'screw it. I'll wait until I have rack bushings'.

I sprayed the shit out of those bolts with PB blaster, and slowly loosened them. They were tight in there, but didn't feel like they were about to break.

I get to mess with them later once I order my bushing kit......

[tzedek]

any time think you might break a bolt off get out the torch. Actually just put the torch on everything you come across, thats my policy

[entirelyturbo]

I guess it makes me feel a little better that I'm not the only one who's had problems with those bolts.

Just for kicks, does anyone know the bolt size and thread pitch off-hand? I'm gonna have to go to a surplus store tomorrow morning to try and match an old one up.

[Bheinen74]

just remember to put anti-seize on the bolts before you put it back together....

[entirelyturbo]

Hell, I'm probably gonna put red Loctite on them.

After all this is done, I don't see any more reason to ever take this stuff apart again.

[Bheinen74]

Hell, I'm probably gonna put red Loctite on them.

After all this is done, I don't see any more reason to ever take this stuff apart again.

until the rack goes bad. It think the mechanice who put those bolts in before you took them out was f'ing with you. He probably locktighted them

[entirelyturbo]

I'm installing a brand-new rack, replacing what appears to be the original one, and the car's already got 158k, so I don't think I'll ever see THIS rack go bad.

Then again, I red Loctite'd the bolts holding the control arms to the body, thinking I'd never take those off again. Thank God they came loose, otherwise I'd have no way of swapping crossmembers

[entirelyturbo]

Old crossmember is out. Came out pretty much without a hitch.

I'm extremely fortunate that my neighbor across the street has a cherry-picker, and was kind enough to let me use it as long as I needed. That way I don't have to cough up $130 for one at Harbor Freight. He's definitely getting a 12-pack of beer when I give it back to him

What sucked monkey balls is that I had to disassemble it and heave it piece-by-piece into my garage, because there'd be no way I could get it in there in one piece, since I can't get the car out of the garage. That's a 2-ton picker too, so even each single piece was heavy as fuck.

I'm taking a little break right now, but I'm gonna reseal the oil pan next, install the new crossmember, put the rest of the front suspension back together, then install the rack, and I might try rebuilding my junkyard PS pump too. I'll probably stop there for the night, and finish up tomorrow, as well as do a tune-up, brake job (all my Hawk pads are in!!! ), and a couple other things.

[evolutionmovement]

Yeah, those rack bolts are too small. Only one gave me a problem. I used several applications of Zep 45 over several days then used the cordless impact on (IIRC) two of them. I think the other two were inaccessible by gun so I had to man them out. I used a torch on the ornery one (smoked real nice with the Zep still on it) and got it without further incident. Another trick I learned is hitting the wrench/ratchet handle rapidly with a small hammer to immitate an impact gun. You don't have to hit it hard as it's the vibrations that help get them loose.

[entirelyturbo]

Oil pan is resealed, new crossmember is in, engine is resting on it/cherry-picker is free, and the right control arm is fully mounted.

The same thing happened with the left side that it did the last time: the lower bolt on the rear bushing cross-threaded... again

I'm super-pissed about it, coz I already fucking rethreaded that damn thing once.

My goal was to get the new rack at least mounted in tonight, but that pissed me off too much, so I stopped there.

I'm gonna fuck with it tomorrow, and hopefully, I can get that thing in there without having to rethread it to the next bolt size and go to Timbuktu to try to find the bolt to match it.

[entirelyturbo]

Phew! I caught it fast enough before I screwed anything up.

Just ran a tap through the hole one more time, and a die over the bolt, just to clean them up, and carefully went about threading the bolt into the hole. Went in straight, didn't cross-thread, tightened it, hit it with the impact, holding strong to this second

I'm hoping I didn't fuck up my power steering pump in my attempt to rebuild it or reseal it or whatever you wanna call it. I used Josh's write-up, which was VERY helpful, but I goofed up putting the snap ring in front of the bearing, and I put a little dent in the seal of the bearing. I also had to tighten the bolts to the back cover to get it to go on all the way, like a seal wasn't sitting right or something. But the shaft still turns okay, and it doesn't seem to be leaking anywhere, so we'll see.

My next stupid move was when I was taking the nuts off the exhaust studs on the heads (put them back on the studs so I wouldn't lose them). I had paper towels stuck in both the heads and manifolds, and I took them out, then took one of the nuts off, and dropped it... right in the manifold Serves me right for taking the paper towels out too early. So I had to unbolt the manifold from the midpipe, turn it upside down until the nut came back out, then I had to run to Advance and get ass-raped to the tune of $18 for a donut gasket on the exhaust

Oh, and Hardy told me a set of Whiteline rack bushings for a WRX would work, but the one on the passenger side seems too big, as it's a little scrunched up. I don't have time to mess with it, so I'm gonna leave it be.

So the rack is mounted (but not connected to the column yet), and the PS pump is in place. I still have to put the exhaust back on , put the swaybar on, line up the column to the rack (that should be fun), bleed the PS system, reinstall the swaybar, and hopefully do plugs, wires, and a brake job... before the night is over...

[Bheinen74]

ah. quite the learning process. oh, and they make strong extendable magnets to get dropped nuts and bolts. makes it real easy to retrieve the dropped ones.

[entirelyturbo]

I have one, but it was too far down. Believe me, I tried!

[206er]

I broke 3 of the 4 bolts doing my steering rack bushings. the crossmember is designed in such a way that water can get into where the rack nuts are welded and sit on top of them and the bolts, rusting the living shit out of them. bad design. I had to drill out and tap a new thread.
I think it might be possible to drill the threads out completely and slide nuts up above the old ones.
to those that are thinking of doing steering rack bushings or whatever, do not, unless you are desperately in need of a new rack.

[entirelyturbo]

Geez! It's that big of a problem huh?

I have to finish up tonight by the way. I got in a hurry last night and did these two VERY stupid things:

1) Dropped a nut down the dangling exhaust manifold! Had to take it off completely and turn it upside-down and shake the nut out (as dirty as that sounds )

2) Mounted the front swaybar backwards... after I had reassembled the exhaust.

So that was a good hour and a half wasted last night, so I still have to connect the rack to the column, bleed the system, and then do everything else.

By the way, here is the current list of foreign objects that fell/were removed from the car during this little adventure:

1) Several rocks of various shapes and sizes
2) An bolt with undetermined original location or date of loss
3) An old axle pin that I popped out years ago
4) A wasp's nest full of dead wasp carcasses

[jamal]

I broke 3 of the 4 bolts doing my steering rack bushings. the crossmember is designed in such a way that water can get into where the rack nuts are welded and sit on top of them and the bolts, rusting the living shit out of them. bad design. I had to drill out and tap a new thread.
I think it might be possible to drill the threads out completely and slide nuts up above the old ones.
to those that are thinking of doing steering rack bushings or whatever, do not, unless you are desperately in need of a new rack.

Huh. When I did the bushings all the bolts came out trouble free. My ball joints slid out of the knuckles without trouble too. Yay me I guess.

[entirelyturbo]

Everything is done... except the steering column is one notch off relative to the rack

Took it for a drive, broke the pads in, etc. etc. Car drove great, except the steering wheel is tilted slightly to the left.

It didn't even really pull to one side, so I got the tie-rod ends pretty well lined up to each other. Of course, I could have 2º overall toe for all I know, but hey, that's why I'm getting an alignment tomorrow

So I'm gonna wait a few minutes for the car to cool back down, then I'm gonna move the U-joint over one notch and try it again.

[entirelyturbo]

ZOMFG!!1!

I am in love with this car all over again.

Just like that, this has become one of the best-steering cars I have ever driven.

Of course, it's hard to say why... because I not only replaced the steering rack, and the U-joint, but I used Whiteline bushings on the new rack. Maybe it's mainly the brand-new rack that feels so taut, maybe it's mainly the U-joint, maybe it's mainly the bushings, or an equal amount of all three.

But goddamn!! I seriously have to use half of the normal steering input to change the car's direction. Oh, and the fact that the car stays MUCH more stable on the highway, and keeps its track a lot easier in the turns is very good too

Now the steering is heavier than before. I am a little concerned about possibly having damaged the bearing on the PS pump shaft, but it's not making any noise. The pump doesn't leak, the system seems to be properly bled, the system seems to check out. I'm wondering if the new rack has to "break in."

Nonetheless, this seriously made as much of a difference in the feel of the car as the WRX springs did.