Steering Rack Disassembly and Refurb

[timsz]

Thank you very much, TimsZ

[Captain Obvious]

My pleasure. The pics of your hardware in your thread are a little different than what I found in mine, but hope the info helps anyway!

[Captain Obvious]

just got some bellows of e-bay.

siteunseen, did you get those bellows you talked about? Are they the same ones I bought, or one of the other alternatives?

[takayuki]

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:

how did you manage to get the lower pinion bearing out?

[Captain Obvious]

how did you manage to get the lower pinion bearing out?

I used a device called a "blind bearing puller" which is an expanding mandrel on the end of a slide hammer.

You put the mandrel though the inner race of the bearing while it's down in the housing, expand it until it's tight, and then use the slide hammer to "knock" it up and out of the housing.

Prices for such a tool are all over the map depending on quality. Here's a pic of one such device. This one is a little over $50 on Amazon:

[takayuki]

ahh i see! Thanks for sharing!

[Darrel]

What is the main difference between the left and right inner tie rod? Measurements the same only the thread is different RH vs LH?

Outer tie rods the same except for RH vs LH threads as well?

Are they regular thread going onto the rack?

[Captain Obvious]

Both of the inner tie rods have right hand threads and can be assembled onto either end of the rack. And yes, the outer tie rod ends are the same except for the RH vs LH threads.

You could use all the same parts on both ends and just make up for it when doing an alignment. Not sure why they went through all the trouble to have the two sides different in the first place. Seems like a lot of extra expense for no "real" benefit.

[240260280z]

The guy with the reverse thread taps and dies company also had the patent on tie rods?

Or he felt sorry for left handed people and wanted "neutral" steering. (groan)

[Darrel]

thanks, only asking because one side is NLA. Both inner are the same on my '97 altima, was wondering why they couldn't be used the same way with z car inners as long as the outer tie rod went with the same inner.

[Captain Obvious]

Yeah, I've heard the same as well about one side being NLA.

I'm thinking that the guy who owned the left hand thread company had dirt on the suspension design guy at Nissan.

[slo929]

This info was great! thanks so much for posting!