Captain Obvious

Ouch! I'm glad I got mine when I did... I bought all the rear stuff in August 2012 and I paid about $100 for 2 inner, 2 outer, and 2 grease seals. I'm thinking they must have been trying to get rid of old stock? They went from their shelf to mine... Been sitting on my shelf until I put them in about two days ago.

I've been doing a bunch of suspension work to my 77 this off-season and part of that work has been on my rear corners. While I was poking around at MSA putting together an order, I saw these things they called "Spindle Pin Rubber Washers". Description from their website MSA Spindle Pin Rubber Washer: The spindle pin rubber washer attaches to each end of the spindle pin between the metal washer and the control arm to seal out dust and debris. These washers are only used with factory rubber bushings. Four required and they’re sold individually. There was no such washer on my car when I took it apart, but since I was placing an order anyway, I bought four. Question is, since they are asymmetric, how are they supposed to be installed? Here's a pic showing the two sides. One side is beveled, and the other side is flat: And there's no metal backer inside. All rubber: And here's how I think it should go on. With the beveled side towards the bushing: Anyone dealt with these before? I don't think I've ever seen them before.

Now that's funny stuff there! I'm fully vested as well!!

One more thing... So why is it that nobody lists these EMPI boots as the correct replacement for the Z series? Probably because of the small end dimensions. I'm thinking that they just don't care about such a small market enough to look into it.

Yeah, it's not just you. The applications for where the boots get used is a little muddy. Remember... This is an aftermarket company that is trying to fit their boots anywhere they can. It might not be a perfect fit on the car, but someone in their application group told sales it would work. That's what got us into trouble at RockAuto in the first place with the boots where the big end is way too big. Someone said the generic fit would work, but they were wrong. Here's a snippet from the EMPI catalog with the three that I think would work: The first is 88-1509 and I have verified through personal experience that it works great. Second is 88-1527 and the dimensions look like it would work perfect as well. Slightly smaller large end and slightly longer natural length. Both of those should be OK though. Third is the 88-1536, and the big end is slightly larger and so is the small end. Small end might require a clamp. I just wish other mfgrs included mechanical shots like that. They all used to, but very few do anymore. Now they all want you to go their website and enter the vehicle and (since they're all so much smarter than I am) they'll tell you what fits. :sick: So a big shout out to EMPI for still including info in their catalog that allows some independent thought.

I got one word for you... Miata. Well, that and a big thanks to manufacturers who still put mechanical drawings in their catalogs! I took a couple measurements off the steering rack and off my old cracked boots and came up with the following: - Big end needs to be about 1.42 inches (36mm). - Small end needs to be about 0.47 inches (12mm). - Natural boot length (neither compressed or extended) needs to be about 6 inches long. Then I did some digging and turned up an Empi catalog in pdf that still has drawings in it and discovered that they had two product offerings that looked like they would fit. I cross referenced their part numbers and found they are used on the Miata. They had two numbers that looked like they would work OK. 88-1509 (used on non P/S Miatas), and 88-1527 (used on Miatas with P/S). From what I could tell, pretty much, the main difference between the two is that the one for P/S is a half inch longer. I bought the non P/S boots 88-1509. Here's the old with the new: Here's the big end: Here's the small end. The Empi boot small end is a little smaller than the original: I was a little worried about the small end being smaller than stock. Put a little tape on the tie rod end threads to smooth out the application. Put a little silicone grease on the tape: Push the boot into place. Small end first. Big end last. Take off the tape. Worked great!! Smaller end didn't cause a problem at all. In fact, it just means you don't need any clamp on the small end. it's tight enough without. Here it is fully collapsed: And here it is fully extended. Note that the big end clamp isn't even tight and it's not pulling off the big end, It snaps into the retaining groove just like the originals: WOOT!!

Nope. It's from a car. A very popular import. From recent times as well! I'm having a hard time containing myself, so unless I get requests for additional pics of the rack disassembled, then I'll spill it later tonight.

Mike, Here's a snipped out of the FSM that talks about the adjustment of the rack tension nut. They changed the wording a couple times over the years, but this is the simplest, easiest to understand version that I could find. This is from 73: In later years (starting in 74) they started suggesting that you could shim the adjustment spring if necessary to get the correct pressure, but I don't think anyone is going to go to that level of detail. So tighten it all the way. Loosen it up 20-25 degrees. Lock it down. Have a beer.

Mike, That's great info for me about those grease holes left open. I checked the threads, and they're 1/4-28, so if I happen to be passing by a hardware store before the rack is done, I may stop in for a pair. But if not, it seems like leaving them open is a completely acceptable scheme as well. Excellent. Also confirms my belief that those hard rubber coated washers are indeed bump stops to limit steering travel. My turning radius, and marred bronze bushings thank you! About those bronze bushings... I bet they're not as uncommon as you might think, even including the lube slot. I've purchased similar stuff in the past for other unrelated applications. For research sake, I'll poke around a little and let you know what I find. The spec on the tension adjust nut is to drive it all the way in until the spring is completely bound and then back the adjustment screw off by 20-25 degrees. In other words... Pretty tight is perfect.

Mike, Awesome. Those are great shots. Couple of questions... You mentioned that you found the inner tie rod grease ports completely unplugged, right? Do you think it came from the factory that way, or is there a chance that a shop or previous owner lost something that was originally in those holes? Also, that article you mentioned talked about replacing and honing the bronze bushings at the ends of the rack housing. Did you replace yours as part of your rebuild, or did you just leave them alone?

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?

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:

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!

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

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!

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:

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?

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: Also note the dent where the inner tie rod end grease plug was hitting the bushing at end of travel. This brings up a question for me... What is supposed to limit end of travel of the rack? On my rack, it was clearly the heads of those little bolts bumping up against the bushings and that just seems wrong. Makes me wonder if my rack was put together correctly. I'm going to file the deformation off the bushing, but unless I do something else, it's going to recur. So back to the question about end of travel limit... I had these two black washers installed just inboard of the tie rod end lock nuts that floated stupidly in space between the grease plugs and the tie rod lock nut. The washer in question is just to the right of the grease hole in this pic: Here's another pic showing the washer after the tie rod end has been removed. The washer in question is top center in this pic. They are thick metal washers with a hard black vulcanized rubber coating applied to the outside: To me... That washer just screams "End of travel bump stop!!". But with the grease plug bolts installed as they were on my rack, it never gets that far. So I'm wondering if those grease plug bolts are correct. I'm thinking that if I used headless set screws instead to plug the grease holes, then not only would I stop denting my bushings, but I would also decrease my turning radius a little. So a question for the suspension experts... What is is that is supposed to limit end of steering travel? Is it supposed to be those black rubber coated washers, or something else?

Got some more pics uploaded. To get the rack gear out of the main tube, you have to take off the tension adjust shoe and the pinion gear. Most of this stuff has been handled before so I'm not going to include as many pics, but thought I would include some. To get the tension adjustment shoe out, first remove the lock ring: Then unscrew the big slotted adjustment cap exposing the parts inside. Remove the washer and spring. Note that I could not fish the tension shoe out of the hole from here. It's not in there real tight, but there's just no place to easily grab it down in the blind hole. I was able to push it out easily from the other side once the rack gear was removed from the housing. You can see the shoe still installed in the housing: To get the pinion gear out, remove the two bolts holding the retainer in place and pull the retainer off. Note that I put some masking tape over the shaft splines to protect the grease seal while it is being slid over the splines: Pull the pinion shaft, upper bearing, and gear up and out of the rack. Mine came out without a fight: Don't lose or bend any of the spacer shims that adjust the pinion shaft end play: After removing the pinion gear, here's what it looks like inside the housing. The rack and lower pinion bearing are still in place: Once you have the tension shoe loose and pinion gear removed, you can silde the rack gear out the end of the housing. Obviously, if you only removed one inner tie rod end, then that's the direction you'll have to go, but if you took them both off like I did, then it will slide out either end. And then once the rack gear is out, push the tension shoe out of the housing:

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?

After I got the bushings sorted out, I disassembled the rest of the rack. This means you have to pull the inner tie rods off. You really only need to remove one end, but since I wanted to clean out all the old grease, I removed both ends. Remove the dust bellows and you're looking at this: Remove the plug from the inner tie rod grease port: Loosen the lock a little bit nut: And unscrew the inner tie rod from the end of the rack gear: After you get the tie rod off, inside you'll find the ball seat and it's associated spring. In this pic, the seat is out laying on the paper towel, and you can see the tip of the spring poking out of the hole in the end of the rack: Ball seat and spring cleaned up: Pull the lock nut and "spacer" off the end of the rack gear and you're left with this: If you pull the other inner tie rod end as well, just be sure you don't mix up the parts from the ends and make sure you put everything back on the same end it came from originally.

rcb, Haha! Well I gotta admit something here... I've been doing all this suspension work you see... And I knew that I had an old set (NOS) of strut inserts packed away in a box in the storage area of the garage. Now mind you, I bought those struts maybe fifteen years ago for the 260 I was working on at the time. Well when I started all the suspension work on my current 280, I went looking for those struts. I found the struts, but they are rears for the 240/260 and won't fit anywhere on the 280. BUT I also found a box of other parts that I bought at the same time with the intention of putting them on the 260. Been so long, I completely forgot I ever even bought them. And one of the things that was in that NOS box was the steering rack bushings. How unbelievably convenient!! So, long story short, I bought them so long ago that I have no idea where. Probably MSA or Black Dragon. And for siteunseen, I didn't consciously choose the black. That's what I found in my NOS mystery box! Here's a pic of the paperwork that came with them. Has Mfgr name and P/N's on it. No idea if this place is still in business, but that's all I got! You can see on the paperwork that they differentiate between "early" and "late", and the P/N I bought was for "late":

siteunseen, I remember talking about those two little plastic plugs that are circled in your pics. I took some close-up pics of mine. Here's one side: And here's the other: Still not sure what they are, but I can tell you that they are NOT plugs for grease fitting holes. Not only are they too small, but if you look inside the rack tube, there are no holes through. Here's a pic inside the tube No holes: So after looking and picking at them, my only theory is that they have something to do with the fitting and alignment of the two major components of the rack tube. I'm thinking that maybe since alignment of the long tube into the cast portion that houses the pinion gear is important, that maybe they loosely fit the two parts together, locked them in an alignment jig, and then used a hard setting thermoplastic to lock the two together. Similar to what they did with the throttle linkage? Just a theory.

I've been doing a bunch of suspension work to my 77 this off-season and part of that work has been on my steering rack. I suspect this is old hat for lots of people, but it's my first time this deep into the rack and I've been trying to take pics of the interesting spots along the way. This whole project started with the rack mounting bushings. My previous owner installed polyurethane bushings on the rack mounts and they didn't look like right. The project snowballed from there, but let's start with the bushings. On the pass side, the bushing looked too narrow for the mounting slot on the rack and after some digging on the forums, it appears that the width of the P/S rack mounting slot got wider on the later cars. It appears that he used an early kit on a later car. Here's a pic of the bushing he put in. You can see the gap where the mounting slot is wider than the bushing: The solution appears to simply use the correct year bushing kit. Here's my replacement bushing installed. It was a tight fit. I even had to put a little silicone grease on the bushing and tap it into place with a plastic mallet. Much better fit: I've seen pics of this before from others, but for posterity, here's the older narrow style compared to the newer wider style: And on the driver's side there was a large gap where the bushing didn't wrap around the rack properly and was pinched by the mounting strap. Here's a pic of the driver's side bushing. You can see the gap and notice the deformation on the left side from not fitting into the mounting strap correctly: Problem was... When I first installed my replacement bushing, it was no better than the one that came off the car. I had the same problem and couldn't get the bushing to wrap around the rack far enough and I ended up with a huge gap where the ends were supposed to meet. After looking things over, I came to the conclusion that the replacement poly bushing wasn't designed properly. The rack has a smooth radius fillet on the inside corners at the bottom of the slots, while the bushings have squarer corners molded into them. As a result, the bushings don't fit comfortably into the slots. Here's a shot of the shot in the rack. Note the smooth rounded fillets in the corners: And here's a shot of the bushing that's supposed to fit in that slot. Note the inside corner that is much sharper than the receiving slot in the rack: Thankfully the poly was hard enough that I was able to cut it with a new very sharp fine tooth file. Using a file I was able to round the inside corners of the bushing to better fit the rack. Here's a shot after I rounded the corners: Finished filing both sides of the bushing and tapped into place with a plastic mallet. Note how much smaller the gap is once the bushing fits snug in the slot and slides all the way to the bottom of the groove without hanging up on the corners: That's what started the project. I'll post more pics as the work progresses.

Chas, I don't want to hijack either, but wanted to let you know that I'll upload my pics when I get the chance. The only thing I did NOT take apart on my rack was the inner tie rod ends. I've got them OFF, but I didn't take them apart. I considered grinding the welds like you did, but I've got no detectable play and simply can't justify the effort. I'll start a thread soon and we can talk the finer points of the steering rack.