Steering Rack Removal/Installation

[Rennen]

In the past couple weekends, I have been in a life and death struggle to remove a power steering rack out of a junkyard car. I finally ended up just cutting the steering shaft in half to get it out of the car.

My problem lies in the Universal Joint atop the steering rack, neither side wanted to come out, and since the cross member is below, and the firewall/exhaust manifold is above, there is no real room to "persuade" the shafts out.


Now I obviously can't go cutting through my own steering shaft to remove my current PS rack, and was wondering if anyone out there had any experience with this?

[nlzmo400r]

you're just gonna have to bite the bullet and pull the crossmember out, shouldnt take long

[Flybert]

UHHhhh, no. It is very easy to take off the rack without pulling the crossmember out. You have to unbolt both bolts on the universal joint. There's one on top and one on bottom. Then you slide the joint up the steering column and off the pinion. You should use a hammer and a chisel or something like that to persuade it to slide up the shaft. That shit likes to stick. Some prying helps out as well. The trickiest part about installing a new rack is getting the PS lined back in there and lines up. You'll definitely need a helping hand with that one to make sure you don't strip them in.

EDIT: And BTW, if you are still having trouble sliding the universal joint up the column, unbolt the whole steering column from inside the car and pull from the steering wheel. That is a much better alternative then fucking with the cross member.

[Dousan_PG]

yep
try pulling the column out from interior
we did that on brian's car to put the rack back in because it was annoying.
just made it easier and only takes another 30 mins if that to do it.

flybert has the idea!

[citizen]

i've helped replacing quite a few steering racks. the easiest way to get the universal joint off is to remove the rack brackets from the subframe and then take out the bottom bolt where it attaches to the rack input shaft,take a hammer and just tap it up and off.

[Rennen]

Thank you all for your replies. I was hoping that someone else had attempted this.

The car I was liberating the steering rack from in the junkyard must have been really rusted then. I had removed all the bolts from the U-joint, completely removed the steering wheel assembly/shaft from the interior, and was beating the hell out of everything I could touch with a hammer :) ... oh well the steering rack itself is in good shape (girl's car, all nissan OEM stuff)

Oh, did you leave the rack bolted to the cross member while you pulled/prodded the steering shaft out? Thats probably where I made my mistake

I'll give this a shot tomorrow and see how everything goes.


-Matt

[crioten]

hey man, where is this junk yard you speak of? if its near me i can always lend a hand...

i hope to get this 92 hatch running so i can autox it against you this season :)

anyway let me know

-glen