As I continue to put my Speedie together, I'm playing with the suspension both front and rear. The steering box that I have from the donor '75 Beetle has a travel of about 2.75 turns from lock to lock and travels about 5.25 inches from LtL. I would like to add any reasonable improvement and thought rack and pinion would be an upgrade. I've heard of builders using the system from early VW Rabbit, and since I couldn't find one to play with, without buying one, I have a rack from a '93 Jetta. It's longer from tie rod to tie rod, but has the same travel ( 5.25 inches ). I can shorten the tie rods to match the ball joint front suspension but I discovered that the turns are different. The Jetta takes almost 3.75 turns L t L.
I've tried to find information on line to get the details about the old Rabbit but can only find sales info and replacement parts. No site gives the turn and travel details. There are some threads here at SOC and at Samba, but no detail about the travel of the Rabbit unit. There is also the question of position of the rack so as not to alter the Ackerman ratio, so that the tight turning ratio is retained from the stock unit. I assume that if the unit is placed in the same relative position as the stock unit, you will approximate the wheel position in tight turns. I have looked at the off-road units advertised and find that some use a really tight ratio, some having a LtL of only 1.5 turns and all are sold for off-road use only. I will appreciate any experience of other builders and tolerate the critism if delivered with humor. (By the way, this is a "Street Beast" using a frame based unit with lots of space since it won't take a stock fuel tank without some drastic alterations.)
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