Replaced Steering Rack Bushings

[rossiz]

after having the pleasure of driving Cap'n O's Z, i was very jealous of his super precise steering. i had a bit of play in mine and was afraid i might need to tear into the rack - turns out it was all in the rack mount bushings. here are a couple of videos showing how much the rack moved - top one shot from under the car shows how the tie rods lifted ~1/2" and the bottom one shot from the engine bay shows the lateral movement. i had the car up on stands and was just moving the front wheel back and forth with my knee while filming

got the $12 poly rack bushing kit from msa and it was installed in about an hour as follows:

1. remove lock nuts and bolts from rack bushing clamps
   
2. pull out shriveled-up oem bushings
   
3. grease up the new ones and push them in - i needed to pull the passenger side tie rod connection at the wheel to get some more clearance
   
4. crank it all together
   
5. enjoy scalpel-sharp steering
   

getting the bushings in was a bit tricky, as there isn't a great way to access them - you can SEE them easy enough, but it's an awkward hand position to get in there. probably easier if you take more things apart, but i was stubborn and wanted to do it with minimal collateral removal.

steering is sooooo much nicer - tight, sharp, can feel what the wheels are doing.

well worth the time and $

[EuroDat]

Thats a lot of movement in the old bushes. Can understand why you didn't have much feel in the steering. Must of felt like steering boat.

Must feel like a new car.

Chas

[Captain Obvious]

Wow, that's a lot of play. No wonder it didn't feel right! And just remember that play would only be worse when the wheels are on the ground and all the forces have to go up because you're fighting friction and the directional loads of steering. I bet you're really digging it now!

So after all this suspension work, what are you going to do about alignment? We talked some about how I did my own, but we didn't really have the chance to get into details.

[rcb280z]

Hmmm...details Captain, that would be great info! I have often said, wish I could do my own alignment.

[rossiz]

yes, it really does feel like a new car - with all the work i've done, i'm really starting to understand why this car was such a hit on the track. when i got it, the thing ran fairly well, handled better than my 4Runner and looked cool, so i figured that was what i should expect from an old classic. i had no baseline to compare it to, and i am sooo glad i decide to dig into it.

she's running way stronger now, better revs too, and handles very aggressively. love the feel in the corners! the last sporty car i had was a 2006 mini cooper and i absolutely loved the computer-controlled automatically adjusting suspension. while the short wheelbase of the mini was certainly a little more flickable, the Z in it's current state feels like it would hang tough with that newfangled technology. i'm really digging the way it slices the corners with almost zero body roll and no skittering over mid-corner bumps.

as for alignment, its actually pretty straight - no pulls left or right at any speed.

after the bushings, my steering wheel is ever so slightly to one side - just a couple of degrees, so i was going to do the alignment the way i always did on old cars back as a kid: tie string to the rear wheels, pull it forward ~20' in front of the car, set steering wheel to center, adjust tie rods so string just grazes both sides of one front wheels.

i seem to remember reading somewhere that the factory spec calls for a few degrees of toe though... will peruse the fsm.

Edited June 1, 2014 by rossiz