Well there's another solution that I didn't think about.  Way to approach the problem from a different direction!

The difference with your and my suggestion is that yours might actually work!

Edited February 16, 20196 yr by Captain Obvious

Mark, can you not loosen the bushing clamps on the steering rack and give the rack a slight twist back to give a bit more clearance?

I might just put a bungee cord on the steering shaft and pull it towards the block a bit... that should work!

The shaft needs to move about 1/2” to work. I can try a twist downwards though.. good idea.

 

I haven’t been back out to the shop yet, but Granny’s idea kept me awake all night. That should work actually. I reinstalled the rack without a reference mark after doing all the powder coating. It’s quite possible I have it rotated too high even for factory steering shaft angles. I hope that’s it!

Sample rack in a friends 240...

In theory, the rack should not be able to rotate at all. The bushings should establish the correct position and lock the rack into place.

That said, I'm guessing there's some squirm that you could probably take advantage of and it sure does look like the angle at that bottom U-joint is off some. It's definitely different than the 240 pics you posted above.

Any chance you got the non-round side bushing in upside down or wrong somehow? Is that even possible? Here's your 280 for reference.:

The steering rack has plenty of rotation when it is all loosened from the bushings and the stop bracket. Mine is definitely rotated too far up as you can see by the different alignment angles at the knuckle on the 240 and mine.

Crisis averted, lesson learned, idiot badge earned...
Rotating the steering rack solved the issue!

That looks much better. Got to love an easy fix!

On ‎2‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 5:34 PM, wheee! said:

The steering rack has plenty of rotation when it is all loosened from the bushings and the stop bracket. Mine is definitely rotated too far up

Well I'm glad that it turned out to be such a non-problem, but is it really OK for there to be that much play in the rack position inside the bushing? I thought the whole point that the bushing on the right left side of the rack is NOT round is to prevent exactly that kind of rotation? What's to prevent it from rotating back to where it was before?

I guess I just never loosened mine up and collected all the tolerance in one direction...

Edited February 19, 20196 yr by Captain Obvious
Don't know my right from left...

There is a rack rotation stop on the rack. That had to be loosened of course. The two bushings have enough slack to allow the rack to rotate the 1/4” or so with no problem. Once I tightened up the rotation stop, and clamped the bushings back down there was zero movement. Plus, it is now in the correct factory position versus my “guess” after restoring the rack and re-installing it.

Plus, the not-round bushing didn’t move on the inside... the outside ROUND section of the bushing rotated under the clamp. The rotation stop was the biggest issue as I had mispositioned it.