Steering Rack Change

[RobK]

Hi all, tommorow i will be changing the steering rack on my new Ledbury. Is the job as simple as it seems? or is there anything i should know about, This will be a first for me so i dont really want to muck it up.

Cheers

Rob

[SimonR]

Hi Rob,

I've done this before a few times on a 1.6 Maestro with and without PAS and it's pretty straight foward.

The only things that caused me problems were that one of the retaining bolts was difficult to get a socket onto because of the proximity of the subframe and an engine mount and also once it was ready to be removed I had to undo and remove one of the diagonal subframe->body struts to get it out.

Oh - you'll also probably need a balljoint separator to get the track rod end's tapered shaft out of the arm on the hub. I spent several happy hours in a scrapper once trying to achieve this, but with the cottect tool it's very simple.

[RobK]

Hi Rob,

I've done this before a few times on a 1.6 Maestro with and without PAS and it's pretty straight foward.

The only things that caused me problems were that one of the retaining bolts was difficult to get a socket onto because of the proximity of the subframe and an engine mount and also once it was ready to be removed I had to undo and remove one of the diagonal subframe->body struts to get it out.

Oh - you'll also probably need a balljoint separator to get the track rod end's tapered shaft out of the arm on the hub. I spent several happy hours in a scrapper once trying to achieve this, but with the cottect tool it's very simple.

Cheers for this, i have a balljoint separator so hopefully all will go well and i can get to all the retaining bolts.

[E_T_V]

Ledburys seem to have rubbish rubber bushes on the rack where it mounts to the car so these are worth swapping (even for standard second hand ones - the ledbury ones I've seen were too soft and I suspect something they had lurking round the back of the garage rather than the right part).