5 minutes ago, siteunseen said:

Did you go with #918?  That's what i have and it has a brownish tint too.  It looks darn good though to me.  Here's a shot of mine right after a cutting and wax.

Yes, 918. It looks great, I just hadn’t seen it up close in real life. I’ve only seen one 918 Z in my life and it was 200ft away going the opposite direction on an interstate.

I'm stoked for it, but I was a bit surprised by it. The photos you find online are no way to tell, and it wasn’t the original orange when I bought it.

I held this photo (found somewhere on this site) up to the samples and they were really close:

Edited July 19, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

This happened:

This is all single stage. The exterior will be two stage.

Edited September 18, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

I’m getting ready to jump into rebuilding my steering rack. Anyone aware of any gotchas I need to look out for before I start? I know there’s a pretty detailed write up on this forum and I plan to dig into that now, but I thought I’d ask just to make sure.

—-

edit:

ive found the piñon bearing (Timken 6003-rs for $24.40, SKF 6003z for $9.30) and a seal (CR6641 for $19.05, SKF6641 for $9.54) that might be right. Just not sure about the seal and don’t want to open it up if I can’t replace it.

thoughts?

Edited October 16, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

Okay, looks like I have the right parts, so I bought the SKF stuff.

Now I’m disassembling the rack per the Cap’n’s write up: 

Just need to figure out if these old inner TREs are rebuildable/reusable.

Edited October 23, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

There are some more pictures in my build thread too if CO is missing some

33 minutes ago, Patcon said:

There are some more pictures in my build thread too if CO is missing some

Cool! Any idea when so I can find it?

Okay, so this is where I’m at so far with the rack:

 

 

I used vice grips to clamp a screwdriver in the divot in the pinion. I placed a set of old crappy channel locks on that to be an anvil for a brass hammer and gently tapped it out, pinion pointing down. Everything else was a breeze to take apart.

The grease is pretty chunky, but it’s not crusty. I think these are original inner tie rod ends after comparing to other threads, so I’m thinking it’s never been disassembled. Anyone know?

Right now everything is sitting in a coat of WD-40 so it does not flash rust after the quick bath I gave it all. I’ll clean it for real later.

Edited October 27, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

Mine did not look like that. Those look to have the four welds around the perimeter like CO disassembled.Unless the 73 was different than a 71, I would say those have already been replaced once. Mine could be fully disassembled.

In this picture you can see the inner rod studs (replated yellow) then the larger piece that threads onto the ends of the rack. The stud goes in first, from the back, then the small spherical washers go against the back of the inner stud. Then the springs I believe. The large squarish lock nuts (plated yellow) go on the rack ends first then the ball assembly get threaded on. You tighten them until the proper movement torque is achieved then the 30mm lock nuts get tightened down

Those are definitely the same spot welded tie rod ends I've messed with. I wonder when they started using those. I had assumed it was with the 260 since they made a bunch of steering system changes about that same time.

Mine is a 07 ‘73, so maybe that year? Everything I have matches Patcon’s except the TREs.

Edited October 28, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

On 10/27/2019 at 8:46 PM, Patcon said:

Okay, gonna ask a noob question, but better to ask that blow it:

I’ve been looking but can’t find a new part number for the two snap rings that is cross referenced to the old part numbers (48265-78500 & 48271-78500). How did you solve this problem? Is this something I can just measure and buy from Napa or something?

Edit: I did find a Nissan part site that had some numbers I’m not familiar with associated with these part numbers: 48265-78500 had T=1.04-1.14, and 48271-78500 had T=1.55-1.60.

I am assuming that I can just buy an assorted box of snap rings similar to a box of cotter pins and should be good to go, right?

Edited October 29, 20195 yr by Matthew Abate

You can measure and probably find a reasonable substitute.  But they shouldn't really need replacement, unless they were damaged during removal.  They are designed as springs, a few cycles won't hurt them.