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Hey everyone, I just replaced the steering rack on my 87 9000 Turbo and what I figured should be about a 4-6 hour job ended up being a two day, 10 hour job! As much as it feels good to accomplish this feat it would have been nicer for it to go a LITTLE bit easier.
The main challenges I ran into really involved the age and mileage of the car. This particular one has 270,000+ miles on it and I'm certain there has never been any work done on the steering. The reason I replaced the rack is I found recently some play in the inner tie rod on the passenger side. So, figuring the odds were that if I only replaced the tie rod on one side the other would surely go soon after I figured the wise move was replacing the rack.
Here are the challenges I ran into. I could not remove the outlet hose on the pump with it mounted so I had to remove it and get it into a position where I had better access to the hose connection. Next I had difficulty removing the tie rod ends so I had to go get bigger vise grips. This helped on one side, but on the other it merely made it possible to loosen the locking nut. To remove the other tie rod end I had to grind (with the help of a friend and a dremel tool) flat spots on the inner tie rod and I still had to use my entire body weight, 200 lbs., to get the vise grips on before it finally broke loose.
Installing the new rack was much easier and only took about 2 1/2 hours. I did find a way to make things easier inside the car when it comes to getting the steering joint off the rack as well as for removing the cup that's in there. If you remove the screws at both ends of the coupling you can slide it up towards the steering wheel, off the rack end and then off the steering wheel shaft and out of the way. This gives excellent access to the screws holding the metal cup in and it is very easy to do.
Good luck to anyone else R&Ring their rack.
Tom R.
posted by 65.139.3...
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