Too late for the sniff test. The plastic drained out of the lower hole and left this stalactite behind. About the same amount dropped onto the bottom of the oven too. The upper hole just bubbled over. Nothing seems loose or out of place.

You have a sample right there.  Stick a hot wire in to it and waft some vapors past your nostrils.  That's actually an official plastics ID test from the past.

Or you can start with a flame - http://www.boedeker.com/burntest.htm  Try it. It's fun!

Funky! Maybe it would be prudent to make sure the two bronze bushings on the ends of the housing are still in-line? Should be pretty easy to check... Slide the rack in and make sure it goes all the way through without any binding?

I'd love to cross section one of those. But the only one I have is on my car.

No issue sliding the rack in. Looks good. There is a small (very small) amount of play in the driver side bronze bushing but that was there before. Not enough to warrant a replacement I think. If they were readily available I would replace it...
As for the plastic test, I was on the hunt for nib I cut off! Darn thing disappeared!!! Crap.

Good.

If anyone has a dead rack they would like to donate to science, let me know, and I'll put it on the cadaver table for some exploratory surgery!  

1 hour ago, Captain Obvious said:

Good.

If anyone has a dead rack they would like to donate to science, let me know, and I'll put it on the cadaver table for some exploratory surgery!  

@zKars might have a spare around that is beyond salvage... he might be willing to do a little investigative journalism to counter all this #FakeNews

Finished my rebuild thanks to this thread! Disassembled the bearings and cleaned them up. Very happy. New inner tie rods and cleaned up the old boots that were in great shape. Thank you everyone!

On 2018-01-18 at 9:34 AM, wheee! said:

@zKars might have a spare around that is beyond salvage... he might be willing to do a little investigative journalism to counter all this #FakeNews

I found a few spare minutes to indulge the OCD in all of us.

Mystery solved. I have a single disassembled 240 rack housing. It has the two plastic plugs. I drilled one out, and found that the plastic only goes in about a 1/8". Then I hit metal. Same for the other plug.

Well if you look at the construction of the thing, you have the steel round main housing, and the aluminum pinion housing (with drivers side bushing flange) casting that is "Attached" to the steel housing. If you look in from the end, you can see the steel center inside the aluminum part. What do you suppose keeps them together and prevents the two from rotating?

Well friction for sure, but those two holes have steel pins in them that lock the two together.   The plastic just fills the remaining hole to the surface of the bushing housing.

To prove the pin theory, I used an 1/8 punch and whacked one of the holes until something emerged into the ID of the bore. It was not easy to move. I'm not convinced its a pin, but something emerges from the hole into the ID.  Here ya go.

You may notice a little dimple sticking into the bore at 3:00 o'clock. This is from my punching. It sure as the heck isn't plastic.  

So I don't really think the kind of plastic is important. Nor is filling the hole at all. Fill if you feel you must. If you drilled right through, I think you might want to put something back in there to keep the two parts from wanting to part ways or rotate.

Any ideas on pushing that knubbn back in? Rack ain't going back in with that thing sticking out like that....

You could use a 1" diameter bar or tube with a chamfer on the end to push it back in.

3 hours ago, 74_5.0L_Z said:

You could use a 1" diameter bar or tube with a chamfer on the end to push it back in.

That could work! Beats trying to long-distance-file or sticking a long ended die grinder in there.  It's a spare anyway.

Expanding collet?

Awesome detective work Jim!