I purchased my car back in 2009 without engine or transmission. So I had never driven this car except to steer it down the drive way and onto the tow dolly. No steering.

A few years later when I was rebuilding the brakes I discovered that the plastic bushing on the passenger side was not in the rack housing. I put it back in the housing, and it would come back out every time the wheels were turned to the right all the way.
July 8, 2010


I purchased me a new brass bushing from Rodney Dickman. Excellent piece to replace the plastic piece. After removing the rack and installing the new piece, and connecting it all back up I discovered that I had very little left turn. I had been thinking all of this time that a PO had rebuilt this rack, and didn't clock pinion back correctly.
The pinion should be about the 3:00 position with the driver side of the housing 54.3mm.
Bloozberry's picture lifted from another thread. Upper right hand corner:


His page 2 to keep this all together:



I decided that I was gonna fix this problem and ordered new inner and outer tie rods fro Rodney Dickman. After removing and installing the new pieces I discovered that the pinion was clocked correctly. I was thinking about what the heck was wrong. I called Rodney Dickman and found out that the bushing should only be sticking out of the housing around 1/4" Mine was about 1 3/4"


I removed the set screws I had installed and after a few taps with a hammer onto a piece of 2X4 It was inside the housing with just over 1/4" still outside the housing. This is the 60mm end on the passenger side.

After setting the correct 54.3MM with the pinion at the 3:00 position I measured the passenger side and discovered that it was right on the nose at 60mm measured the same as the driver side was measured. The measurement of 54.3mm is right about at 2 3/16 ". 60 mm is easier to locate than 2 3/16 on some tape measures.

54.3mm


I am putting this up for all to see so maybe you will not make the same errors I did.
Thanks to Rodney Dickman for teh correct part, and all of the help.

Thanks to Bloozberry for posting the manuel rack rebuild pages from the 88FSM.

[This message has been edited by josef644 (edited 06-19-2012).]

No problemo... thanks for posting what you found (nice pics BTW). I believe there was someone else within the past two months that had a similar problem but no one could figure out just what was wrong. Maybe if he sees this thread it will solve his problem too.

quote Originally posted by Bloozberry: No problemo... thanks for posting what you found (nice pics BTW). I believe there was someone else within the past two months that had a similar problem but no one could figure out just what was wrong. Maybe if he sees this thread it will solve his problem too.

I had asked you about this a while back in someone else's thread also.

This has been haunting me for about a year now. Imagine loosing about half of your ability to turn left. Two inches of left at the rack would translate to about 6-7 inches at the leading part of the wheel and tire. Maybe more.
-Joe

[This message has been edited by josef644 (edited 06-19-2012).]

While doing a wheel fitment on an 88 suspension that had been removed from a parts car, I noticed that the travel wasn't the same from side to side. It was the brass aftermarket bushing - it wasn't fully seated before the rivets were installed. Drilled them out and the bushing slid in further and equalized the travel from side to side.

I think this is a pretty common thing for these brass bushings to not have been installed properly.