I recently bought an na 1986 and have been working on all the little issues. I have no experience working with cars but have lots of friends with tools and experience who have been helping me. When I first checked the car it had a small leak with fluid dripping from the passenger boot. Today after doing an oil change, topping up the power steering and bleeding it, the steering felt great but after parking another leak manifested itself as a puddle appeared from the boot on the driver side. Could the leak be an easily accessible seal or connection that I can fix myself without removing the rack? If not (I am assuming not), my only other options are to find a remanufactured unit, have someone fix it, or try to learn to rebuild it myself. My issue with the reman ones is that the availability for the fc seems very stark and all of the brands I find have a lot of complaints about the quality, with the racks failing and leaking quickly. Does anyone know where I can find a reliable rack for the fc? Any suggestions on the best route to get the steering rack reliable are appreciated. Also, I am not opposed to a manual rack but those are extremely hard to find. I found one reman one but the company again has very mixed reviews on the quality of their work (and idk about warranty): https://inrackandaxle.com/product/1986-1992-mazda-rx7/

 

Chips motorsports sells manual racks but you have to send your rack in. Theyre also expensive.

 

Pretty sure you need to take out the rack and rebuild it to fix that leak.

there should be a very detailed thread here on rx7club on either:
rebuilding a fc rack
or
rebuilding and depowering a fc rack

Rebuilding yourself is very involved. I recommend finding that thread to see the required steps. When these cars were plentiful, the easiest solution was to just get a used steering rack.

So you’re right, get a used one, get an off the shelf rebuilt one, or get it rebuilt.

I used to work in the global chain auto parts economy and have learned to be very skeptical about their reman’d power steering components as the bar for quality control was extremely low.

I’d rather find a local company who specializes in rack and pinion repairs and is known to do good work.

 

If it's not leaking too badly, then I would suggest just leaving it but checking the fluid level more often.

Alternatively, you could buy one off Ebay, but make sure it's for an S4.

Also, Atkins sells a rack & pinion rebuild kit (https://www.atkinsrotary.com/86-92-R...05-32-180.html). It's not cheap. If you can find somebody that experienced in rebuilding R&P units you might want to check if they can rebuild it.

 

Won't any fc rack fit?
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Physically, any FC rack will fit, but there were different types of racks used between S4 and S5 models. Maybe this thread will help: https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generati...rences-920505/