TOW got a new steering rack yesterday. I took her over to Eric's shop and dropped the pan under the spoiler/rack. We scratched our heads for a while because I had added RedLine synthetic PS fluid when we put everything together, but the fluid on the pan was green. It looked like motor oil, but there was none to be found coming from the engine.
Then I pulled a boot off of one end of the rack. After almost being doused by fluid, it was then obvious that the rack was the problem. As best we could tell, the rack comes prefilled with a green fluid, and apparently there is a ton of it in there. I mean a TON! We must have dumped a gallon of the stuff on the floor during the swap. Everytime we thought we were done, out came more.
The swap went smoothly for the most part (fluid spills notwithstanding). To get the rack out on the JRS subframe you have to remove the front LCA support, which just adds some extra time. And it's a bit harder to get to the steering u-joints with the front sheetmetal in place. But I got it done. This job took about 2x as long as I expected, so we were in a bit of a hurry to get the toe set, but we got it close enough and I drove her home. I'll get her to a shop for an alignment this week, and we should be good to drive for a while.
It's still a bit of a mystery why/how this rack failed. I did add some turn restrictors to the rack to keep the wheels from hitting the LCA's, but I cannot see why that would have caused any issues. It looks like they just bottom out against a solid metal flange. Hopefully this won't happen again in the near future! If so, I'll have to look at the PS pump. I do have a volume restrictor in there (from Wegner), so it is supposed to be balanced to the rack I'm using.
Most everything else looks pretty good under the car. We may have a small leak on the rear end housing, but it was hard to tell if it was fluid that blew back from the PS rack or not. I cleaned it all up and will check it again after a few more miles.
|