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Loose Steering Rack


ns87

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I was planning on replacing my tie rods today. I've been having an ongoing clunk on the driver side. Worse at highway speeds depending on where the steering wheel is.

 

I jacked up the car, grabbed the wheel (where the clunk was coming from) at 9 and 3. No play. I grabbed it at 12 and 6. No play. I switched to the other side (not where clunk was coming from). No play.

 

Hmmm.

 

Looked at the front tires. No uneven wear.

 

Had someone move the steering wheel. Sub frame is not moving. The steering rack is loose and making a popping noise. Damn.

 

Forgive my lack of knowledge on this, but where the heck are bolts for the steering rack? It is kinda scary under that subframe. I figure I'd hop in there and tighten things up.

 

Thank you for reading! As a side note, I found out that I have a front sway bar. I never knew :lol:

 

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One of my rack bolts was loose and the other only tightened up a little bit. None of my clunks were removed :cry:

 

How exactly did you attack that? It looks like the steering rack bolts go right behind the engine with no room for a wrench?

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I dont remember. I have the 3.1 with the 3 speed, if that makes any difference. Usually on my car I will put a wrench on one side of the bolt/nut and tighten down on the other side with a ratchet until the wrench can no longer rotate and just tighten against this.

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Yes I have looseness feeling over slight bumps. And I'd have to correct myself and say this fixed the noise about 80%. I can still hear a clunk every so often, and steering isn't the tightest. I'm sure it has to do with front shocks, ball joints, tie rods, blah blah blah I'm still driving my car lol :twisted: :redface:

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did you tighten the adjuster nut on the rack? I've done this a few times on various cars.. and it has solved several problems.

 

you will notice on the drivers side of the rack that there is a big hex head with a jamb nut on it. back the jamb nut off and tighten the hex head until tight, then turn it loose by about 60 degrees(one hex facing aka 1/6 of a turn) and tighten the jamb nut tight again.

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Yeah, until I had my more car savvy friend with me, I tightened that hex head nut thinking it was the mounting nut (it was a little loose) :lol: :willynilly: Whatever the problem is, I know I'm not in danger from it. And my tires do not wear unevenly, so I can live with it for now

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