Rack & Pinion steering

I am partway through the installation.

I haven't worked on it for several weeks because I fell when I was tree trimming and it has been painful to move around.

The rack is mounted and I have one tie rod installed, on the right side.  The tie rods are a little long.  On the right side, the ends are screwed all the way in so there is no adjustment in one direction.  On the left side, even all the way in was too long.

The tie rods are not hollow tubes.  They are solid with the ends bored out.  So, when I shortened the rod I also had to shorten the end piece the same amount.

I also used 14mm x 1.5 right and left taps to clean up the threads.

On the beam, I had to remove the nubs that position the clamp for steering box rotation and I removed most of the piece that limits left/right movement of the pitman arm.  The clamp is pretty much against the grease fitting.  I am still a little concerned about whether I will have an issue with alignment with the steering column shaft.

I will have to shorten the shaft a bit even though my original setup had it moved back about 2.5" with a spacer.

I am using a KIA SEDONA 2002-2005 u-joint.  It seems to match the splines on the rack.

I used aluminum angles clamped to my QuickJack to hold things in position.

Partway through the beam mods, still had to grind off the nubs:

Jim, no I didn't dive in this particular pool. Yet. But maybe in the future.

Michael, carry on, and feel better.

Hmm, it not exactly plug and play.

I've seen your picture...you're to old to be swinging in the trees!

Me too

I cut the flange off a shaft coupler thing and welded the splined part into the end of my steering column shaft.

Here is the completed set-up:

The rack bracket has an angle extending to the passenger side that attaches to the steering damper attachment place.  When I clamped the bracket on the driver's side, the end of the angle was about 1/2" out from the attachment place on the passenger side.  When I pulled it tight it seemed to pull the shaft in the steering column tub out of alignment.  Finally, I used a nut as a spacer under the angle.  This may mean that the rack is not precisely parallel to the beam.  It seems like this isn't much of an issue.

The angle of the angle might have been caused by the clamp on the driver's side being where I did all the grinding on the beam tube.

Yeah, but how does it drive?

@DannyP, I don't know yet. while I was working on it I noticed that my ball joint boots that I had replaced a great expense only a few hundred miles ago had splits.  At the time I was told they were using the good ones.

I am going to attempt to replace them.

Also, my wife thinks I didn't spend money on car insurance in August.  She wanted me to wait until spring to save money.  I was overly optimistic at that time about being able to drive it soon.

Michael, your installation looks really great.

I got just the ball-joint boots, and they aren't too hard to change. Hey, you probably could use an alignment anyway, set the camber first, then do the toe.

A digital angle gauge can set the camber. Take a reading before you pop the joints off, don't move the car, and reset the camber to the same reading. Or, make punch marks in the camber adjusters and spindles. All you need for toe is a tape measure.

I don't recall what vendor I got the boots from, but it may have been aircooled.net.