Steering Rack Disassembly and Refurb

[EuroDat]

So Chas, You mentioned in another thread that you cut the welds on your inner tie rods so you could tighten them up a little?

Do you have any pics of that process? I'm still thinking that I don't need to go to that extreme (yet?), but out of curiosity, how deep do you think you had to cut?

Hi Captain,

Great write up and the photo's are clear BTW. This thread is worth moving to the Tech articles section IMO.

Its going back 2 1/2 years, but I remember mine was loose. If you look at your first photo in post 7, your threaded end remains suspended in the air. Mine would fall down. It actually had a millimeter or so play in it.

By chance I discovered I could turn the welded lock nut, all be it with difficulty. It was welded, but still turned. I think that is what caused the excessive free play. It was then I decided to cut the weld with a small dremel cutting tool, since it couldn't get much worse than it already was. If I couldn't fix it, I would still need a new one. I retensioned it and tested it with a spring gauge according to the FSM specs and tacked the weld with a stick arc welder.

Looking at your unit, I wouldn't go that far either. You don't seem to have any problems there.

Interesting about those grease port plugs. I can't remember mine sticking out like that.

Someone in the past may have changed the originals after damaging them when greasing the rack?

Keep the posts coming:cool:.

Chas

[Zed Head]

So one of the interesting things about the rack is that they used bronze bushings at the ends of the housing on which the rack gear slides. There is no discussion that I could find in the FSM's that talk about those bushings. I'm sure they're off the shelf items and are certainly replaceable with the right tools and replacement parts, but I'm guessing they were never intended to be a fixable item. If they're wallowed out, you're probably supposed to replace the whole steering rack assy? Note the lube groove cut in the bushing:

Those bushings shows as a replaceable item but don't appear to be available (on courtesyparts.com anyway). That grease looks pretty solid, do you think it was doing any lubricating?

Datsun 240Z/260Z/280Z Steering Gear (Rack & Pinion Type)

[Captain Obvious]

Blue, Thanks for the leads. At this point, I'm 99% convinced that those rubber coated washers are indeed bump stops and my rack should never have had those plug bolts installed in the grease ports. Since the other end of that passageway is not plugged anyway, I'm thinking that it probably doesn't matter if I plug those holes with something headless (like set screws) or just leave them completely open hidden inside the rack bellows. But I AM sure those headed bolts are a mistake.

Zed Head, Thanks for the info on those bushings. Apparently they seem to have been available at some point. Curious thought that a part that was offered wasn't discussed in the FSMs. I bet they didn't sell a lot of them. And about that grease... Yes, that's what snowballed this project. Originally I was working on the rack mounting bushings. During that work, I noticed that the bellows were split so I pulled them off. Once the bellows were off, I noticed how hard and waxy the grease was on the rack ends. And before I knew it, I had the whole thing taken apart!

Chas, My inner tie rods droop when they don't have the spring and seat pushing against them from the rear. Are you saying that yours drooped even WITH the spring and seat applying pressure on the back side of the ball? If that's the case, then yours were clearly looser than mine. Mine stay up (as you pointed out) when attached to the rack, but once removed, they droop. When you cut your welds, did you use the cutting disk along the seam? Is that how you broke the bond? With a small slit along the existing part line? How much of an additional rotation do you think you got out of yours before they tightened up to spec? Eighth of a turn maybe?

[Captain Obvious]

And here's progress to today. I got the entire thing torn down.

Here's a pic of the whole thing exploded. Only thing you can't see is the lower pinion bearing. I pulled it out, cleaned it, and put it back in before I thought to take this shot. And I wasn't going to pull it again just for the camera:

Left end parts:

Right end parts:

[EuroDat]

Chas, My inner tie rods droop when they don't have the spring and seat pushing against them from the rear. Are you saying that yours drooped even WITH the spring and seat applying pressure on the back side of the ball? If that's the case, then yours were clearly looser than mine. Mine stay up (as you pointed out) when attached to the rack, but once removed, they droop. When you cut your welds, did you use the cutting disk along the seam? Is that how you broke the bond? With a small slit along the existing part line? How much of an additional rotation do you think you got out of yours before they tightened up to spec? Eighth of a turn maybe?

I had one side that was loose before I started dismantling it. The square nut (aluminium colour in your photo's) was tight, but the welded nut turned. I think the nut was not tight enough before welding.

I used a very small dremel drill with a thin cutting disc, about 1/2mm thick and cut between the nut and cap end until I was through the weld. The nut tightened about 1/3 of a turn past the weld. The other side was tight and didn't need dismantling at the weld.

Chas

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks again Chas for the details. It sounds like your one side was definitely looser than either of mine. I don't think I'm going to whip out the Dremel at this juncture.

My rack bushing install screw-up by my PO is just the tip of the iceberg. I've found so much stuff wrong with my suspension it's just comical. I'm betting that my car will feel so much better when I'm done that I won't have a second thought about tightening up those inner tie rod ends.

That's the plan anyway!

[Captain Obvious]

Oh, and BTW... I think I've turned up a cheap viable alternative to the original steering rack bellows.

[Mikes Z car]

I have wondered for years if there was a cheap alternative. What did you discover? I have wondered if it might be possible to slather (this would not look nice) (isn't slather a nice word?) black silicone rubber all over an existing one with holes.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Mikes Z car

[Mike W]

Captain,

Really nice job of writing this up. I only wish I had it about 6 months ago when I was planning my rebuild. It would have been very helpful. Hopefully I can add a few more bits of information that will help as well.

I finished my rack refurbish and install just recently. I was planning to do this some time back but could not locate some of the critical replacement parts like the inner tie rod ends. I did find a source but they were not available at the time. So I went with a remanufactured one for about $300, which in the limit looked like it was only cleaned up, repainted, new boots, perhaps new grease, and that's about it. Was a definite improvement over my original one with 150+ miles on it and almost 40 years, but it was not what I was expecting.

In the course of doing some research, I ran across a rebuild article on the IZCC site:

the Z Car Home Page

It was contributed by John Downing and apparently those inner rack end bushings were available from Nissan at one point. If you read the article he purchased a "kit" that included these as well as some other critical components. Unfortunately I could locate them and they are NLA from Nissan now. Never the less, the article was very informative otherwise.

I gave up on finding the end bushings and decided to replace as much else on my original rack as possible. Went through the exact same process as you outlined in your posts, but I also found that my inner tie rod ends did droop even when full tightened, so finding new ones was going to be critical.

Well I did locate them, and although the design is a little different, they have proven to work really well so far. They are made by a company called Rare Parts and you can find the Z steering parts here:

http://shop.rareparts.com/smtp/shopdisplaycategories.asp?iyear=1974&imake=0041|NISSAN&imodel=1009|260Z&iproduct=0049|STEERING, GEAR, PUMP & COMPONENTS

These are a completely sealed unit but fit perfectly on my rack. They only make one thread configuration so you have to make sure you get the correct outer tie rod ends, and I believe it is the one for the passenger side.

In addition, I was able to locate the bushing / grease seal that is on the top of the pinion cover plate. If anyone needs the part number for that I'm sure I can dig it up.

Also, I went and looked at some of the pictures I took and I did not have any sort of plugs in the end of the rack. They were just open holes.

All of the gears and bearings looked good and so I cleaned everything up, re-greased everything and then re-greased it again, and installed it on the car. The new inners seemed to make a lot of difference and overall the steering was much more stable and responsive than the remanufactured one it replaced. So far very happy with the refurbish. Wish I could have found a new one, but in the absence of that, this was a very acceptable alternative.

I've included a few pictures as well.

Mike.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69921[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69922[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69923[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69924[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69925[/ATTACH]

[Captain Obvious]

Mike, Thanks much for adding to the info.

So it seems there might be a source for inner tie rods after all? I'm planning to reuse mine, but maybe I should squirrel away a pair for the future. That's great detective work.

I couldn't see your pic attachments though... Not sure what the problem is, but it's probably at my end. I'm going to post the last of my pics in a sec, and I sure hope you didn't just post the same shots!

[Captain Obvious]

Here's some pics of the pinion gear bearings. There are two of them, and on the later racks like mine, they are identical. I've done a little digging and I believe the earlier racks used just one roller bearing at the top, and a sleeve bearing down inside the rack housing. But I've got two roller bearings. Here's the top bearing which is pressed onto the pinion gear shaft:

The bearings they used are intended to be side loaded, and because of the design, you can take them apart. Carefully pry off the grease seal, pop off the retaining ring, and the bearing falls apart. You don't HAVE to take it apart to clean it out, but you can do a more thorough job if you do. Here's the retaining ring popped out of it's groove:

Take the bearing apart, clean the old grease out, put it back together, and add new grease:

Here's the lower pinion bearing popped out of the housing. Note that this was not the easiest part of the job:

But after seeing the grease in there, I'm glad I went through the effort:

[Captain Obvious]

I have wondered for years if there was a cheap alternative. What did you discover?

I'll post more info in a day or two. I want to make sure they fit as well as they I think they will. I want to give it another day apart in case anyone wants any pics of stuff that I haven't taken already.

I will tease you a little bit and tell you that I got a pair of them for $8.99 each, and they look perfect! :tapemouth

So... Anyone want to see any other angles of the rack or it's parts before I put this thing back together?