This is my first time buying any used parts from either scrap yards or part out cars but my 87 FC has developed a really bad leak that only seems to rear its ugly mug when the car is sitting. Not the lines, not the boots and if you put it up in the air it doesnt leak but when you leave it overnight suddenly theres a red puddle on your garage floor.

I figured I'd do a manual steering conversion because the PS cant leak if its not there anymore but a referb rack off ebay is like $450 without rods or brackets. Ended up finding a guy whos parting out his car and he has a manual rack ready to go:

My concern is because this is A; a used rack, and B; a safety item considdering this is how you stear the vehicle I want to make sure I do my diligence inspecting this thing so I dont end up sending my car off a cliff because the rack gave out.

Any tips on inspecting used racks? any bad experiences with used manual steering racks? I requested more pictures to see the rack boots and rod ends as well as the mounts because they seem pretty rusted. Should I even bother with this?

If i were to just get a refurb rack I would need to find brackets but I've looked high and low for manual rack brackets and couldnt find a darn thing.

Any advise is helpfull

 

Here are a few things you can check:

- Tie rod boots should be untorn, no cracks, no grease coming out. These are replaceable without too much difficulty as long as all the joints are still good.

- Tie rod end should move, but be quite firm and have no slack or grinding in the ball-joint. Also replaceable.

- Inner tie rod can't be inspected with the boot on, but you should be able to move it around similarly to the outer and feel for any weirdness. I've heard the inner tie-rods on the manual rack are hard to find for some reason (do a search) so ideally try to get a rack with a good set. It's not difficult to replace them but you need to find the parts.

All of the above parts are easy to fix with minimal expertise. The remaining tests indicate a probable issue with the hard parts inside the rack, which means that you might need to find another manual rack to source replacements:

- Grab the body of the rack with one hand and a tie-rod with the other, then try and push it in and out. There might be some movement but there shouldn't be any slack. If it does start to push inward or outward look up and see if the pinion shaft is turning, in which case it's probably fine. If the rod end is moving in / out with no rotation of the pinion it means there is slop in the rack/pinion, or incorrect preload.

- Grab the body of the rack with one hand and the pinion shaft with the other and try to wobble it side to side, in and out, etc. There should be no slack here or the pinion bearings are worn.

- Grab a set of vise grips and a cloth. Put the cloth on the pinion and clamp the vise grips over it (to prevent damaging the splines), then rotate the rack end to end and make sure there's no weirdness. If there are any tough spots or weird noises then it probably needs a rebuild.

 

Absolute LEGEND! Thank you for this! As far as the picture I have, would the rust on the mounts be setting off any alarm bells? and if I want to get new mounts where would I get them for manual rack? Or are the interchangeable from the PS rack?

 

They look like they're the same as the manual rack to my eye. I'm not certain since I don't have a manual rack. The rust itself wouldn't bother me in terms of safety, but it's worth removing the rust and painting them just so it looks nice and is more pleasant to work with. Or if they're interchangeable use the ones from your PS rack.

The rust on the mounts does mean that the rest of the rack was also subject to wet / salty conditions, but the inside of the rack is sealed by the boots. So as long as all the joints feel decent I would just give it a good cleaning and not worry about it.

 

Can anyone confirm whether or not the rack mounts on PS and manual are the same? I had a guy helping me with my car earlier today tell me to get new mounts and I assumed they werent the same but seeing as how I cant find anything labeled "manual steering rack brackets" im starting to doubt if they arent.

 

Looks like the part numbers are identical:

 

Something I just noticed, I know you said the inner tie rods for the manual rack are hard to find but from the diagram you posted they appear to be the same part # as well.

 

So I bought the rack from the guy and noticed the right side boot was completly rotted away and had a ton of cracking. Just recently got the boots off as I intend to replace them anyways and found this on the right side:
A lot of it is just surface rust and the rack still goes from lock to lock but when you go all the way to left lock it stiffens a little (not a bunch but when you turn the pinion with pliers its noticeable), probably because the right boot was bad, letting in humidity and water and the rack teeth inside doesnt have much grease left, if you turn it all the way to left lock the rust on the inside quickly dissipates so I dont think the teeth in the rack are rusted. Has anyone tried to re-grease a manual rack and pinion and how would I go about doing that without disasembling the whole thing?
Figured all it needs is a clean up on the right side, grease the teeth in the rack, turn it lock to lock till it frees up a bit, new boots, inner and outer tie rods and its good to go.

 

Yikes! That's pretty bad. I think it's probably fixable though.

I rebuilt a power-steer rack not long ago. There are a few differences but mostly the manual rack is just a simpler version of the power rack. There is also the procedure in the service manuals, although sometimes seeing actual pictures is easier.

Personally I'd get everything all the way disassembled. Clean rust in the least invasive way possible (electrolysis or evapo-rust, nothing too agressive). Shine the rack bar up a bit with some metal polish so it's smooth. Paint the body of the rack to take care of that external rust. Inspect the bearings inside to ensure they still turn smoothly. Then slather everything with a decent quality synthetic heavy grease and replace the tie rods and boots. Make sure to adjust the yoke preload as per the manual.

If it's still turning I'd be surprised if there's anything fatally wrong. The biggest thing is to make sure that all the teeth are present and the profile is still correct. A bit of surface rust can be cleaned away without any issues but any serious pitting might cause issues down the line as it wears in with the pinion.

 

Well unfortunetly I dont have anywhere to do any major disassembly atm as im in the middle of moving. Got no garage or even a concrete pad to work on. Dont suppose you know of anyone in the east TN area I'd be able to reach out too would you? If not im probably just going to have to wait it out till I get a new home with a proper setup but thats probably not going to happen for another 6 months.

 

Unfortunately I don't. I'm in Ontario and around here it would be hard to find a shop that would touch it. Most of local shops would do a rack replacement, but wouldn't rebuild one. You might try calling a few local shops though and see if they can recommend anyone.

 

Sorry to bring up an old post I made but I finally have a place to tear apart the manual rack I bought and I ran into a problem. I have both nuts off so I can see the bottom of the rack and the bearing that holds in the steering pinion shaft, but I cant seem to pull out the shaft. the bearing looks press-fit, and theres no nut that I can see (thats accessable that is) thats holding it in. Cant seem to find anywhere that shows the proper way your supposed to pull it out so I thought I'd ask here. There doesnt seem to be any place I can leverage either.

 

I feel like there's a snap-ring under the dust cover on top. If that isn't removed then the pinion will never want to come out.

You might need to tap the pinion out (gently) from the bottom. I'd put a nut back on the threads to protect them. If you have to do anything beyond gentle tapping, stop and reassess.

 

so theres no way to access anything at the tip (bottom) of the pinion shaft. I looked at your write up for the PS rebuild and unlike the PS rack where you have a bearing at each end of the pinion and you take off the nut on the bottom of the pinion, the manual rack housing is cast at the other end so theres no way to access down there. As far as the bearing on the steering shaft input side I'm not seeing any kind of snap-ring holding it in. here are 2 pictures for refrence.

 

The snap ring definitely would have been higher than the bearing. Looks like the manual rack is a bit different.

Did you remove the yoke adjustment? Not sure if that would prevent the pinion coming out.

 

If your reffering to this, then yes. This and the picture before are pretty much the only 2 accessable areas where you can get at the pinion. and you can kind of see the bottom of the housing where the pinion shaft end is. Theres no nut there or anything you can take off, its just a cast housing.

 

The rack mounts on the manual and the power steering rack are different on the passenger side. The driver side is the same.


@Paulc19 the pinion shaft just pulls out. there isn't a snap ring on the manual racks. it looks like youre just wrestling with some rust and its seized. but ive torn apart my manual rack and that shaft just comes straight up and out.

 

yeah I ended up taking it to a local machine shop to see if they can get it pulled out. was it very hard when you pulled it out? looking at the teardown procedures on the rx7 FSM it made it sound like it wasnt even press fit, like it just slides out with your hand. I had an old steering shaft that I attached to the end of the shaft and tugged on it with everything I had and it didnt even budge from what I could see.

GOD FORBID I have to take that bearing off by breaking it, is there any way to get a new one or would I be screwed in that scenario?

 

Update #2:
Good news - Machine shop got it out
Bad news - bearing is shot, lots of play up/down and side/side
Good news - cleaned off the bearing and it had a part # "7203B". took measurements and they were all the same as the old bearing so I THINK this is the correct one. You can find them on both ebay and amazon. heres one:

bought one off ebay just because it was cheaper and would arrive quicker. I had the machine shop press the bearing off the shaft. Will update when I have the new one and find out if its an exact fit.

 

It was not hard to remove. It slides out with minimal effort, so yeah it must have been seized up for you but happy a machine shop got it out for you!

 

Think this is gonna be my final update for the rack rebuild as I got the bearing for the shaft, greased everything up and put it all back together today. also gave some fresh paint to the rack since the old paint was coming off and rusting. Not my best work but about 3-4 coats of primer and another 4-5 coats (just to be safe) of paint (both high temp). Think it came out really well.
Things I learned:
- PAY ATTENTION TO THE WAY THE UPPER SHAFT BEARING CAME OUT! This was the one I replaced and the machine shop installed it the wrong way. when I installed the shaft/bearing assembly it came apart but I was able to press it back together without much issue with a shop press I bought recently (because if you cant get a job done right you do it yourself). The bearing I bought had 1 "wall" on the inner and outer races. the outer race wall needs to be facing up while the inner race needs to be facing down towards the gears.
- There is a sort of "pre-tension" on the pinion shaft bearing. The FSM doesnt really explain it very well as they use all the specialty equipment that is impossible to get ahold of. to take it off (the inner silver piece arroud the shaft) I had to get a giant monkey wrench so I couldnt torque it down like the FSM states you should so unless you want to custom fab a socket for it I just tightened it by feel and then locked it in (the brown piece). you can tell if its overtensioned or under since you'll either have it hard to move or too much play.
- The pressure plate (the only other servicable area on the manual rack) also has a set "pretension" similar to the pinion shaft. tighten the inner threads then tighten the outer edge to lock it in. FSM states its to stop the rack from twisting and the spec is 0.08mm but since I dont have a dial indicator I just tightened it to where there was no play BUT you could still turn the rack lock to lock without much effort. This was something I questioned when I had the rack put back together because it seemed extreemly stiff and I ended up having to losen it a lot to get it to turn fairly freely (or at least turn without the gears sounding like they were binding)
Can you do this by yourself - Considering how I did this in my small garage you should be able too provided you have the tools. I would think the only special things you would need to R&R the rack would be a slide hammer for if the steering shaft wont come out, a press and the large monkey wrench I mentioned before.