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Center new Rack and Pinion Steering Shaft

A

apok

New member
Hi,

Looks like I'm starting on the journey of replacing my 2004 Grand Prix GT2 rack and pinion tonight!

The remanufactured unit I bought doesn't have the steering shaft lined up where it would connect to the intermediate shaft - can I just take some pliers to this, spin it around and guess where center is? Is there a better way to center it?
 


what i did was to lay the two racks next to each other, then made that nub turn with a adjustable wrench to match the angle of the old one.

last rack i got the shaft back on solo, no help, it was that close. i only had to unlock the wheel and move it a very tiny bit, and it went right on.

i found if you pull the shaft down from the boot so you can hook your finger on top of the U joint part, then jack the sub frame up so the rack is coming up to the shaft, as you jack it up try to get it on. once its on jack up enough so its all the way down, then bolt it back on. then jack the frame up the rest of the way and bolt it back up.

having a friend to turn the wheel back and fourth that little bit is a huge help.
 


I was hoping to hear that :-D

So far I need two new stabilizer links, and the subframe bushings kinda fell apart when I took them off.
 
Yeah, it sure does. Their way of identifying which rack I have was to ask how many turns the steering wheel does, instead of using something sensible like the RPO. Ah well, only a day lost to it.
 


i had one even better. the rack never showed up. so i was left holding my dick for 48 hours waiting for it to be delivered to the store.
 
In the meantime, any tricks for flushing the system with the hoses disconnected? May as well make the most of my off day.
 
it should have drained out for the most part. but you can flush the pump and lines by putting a pan under the lines, then fill the power steering pump. it should drain out the lines. if you want more to blow out you'll need a compressor and a rag over the pump fill hole, then blow it out. not really needed tho.
 
Eh, it was kinda sludgy-looking power steering fluid. Would running the engine to pump fluid out be a bad idea?
 
it will blow out with some force if you do that. one line sucks, the other pushes, so if you put one line in a bucket of new fluid and the other to a drain pan, that would flush it for sure.

gravity is so much cleaner tho.
 


I filled up the power steering fluid reservoir... drip drip drip comes power steering out of the hoses. The return hoses is clear with a slight reddish tint, while the pressure hose is much darker.

Should I bother with trying to siphon from the reservoir, or just buy a few more quarts and cycle it through with the car on for a few seconds?
 
Ran it a few times, pulled the return line and plugged it at the reservoir, and it flushed out nicely.

Spent far too long trying to get the shaft back on, but finally got it down and over.

I topped off the reservoir, and put the cap on tight, and idled for a few minutes, steering left to right. The pump was whining a fair amount. Do I want to leave the cap off to let air escape, or do I just have to do that a bit longer?
 
A few weeks ago when it was super cold out (-25C) after work, I noticed the steering was very stiff when turning more than ~15 degrees. I am not sure if this was the rack being stiff, or if the wheels were coming in contact with snow in the wheel well and they just didn't want to turn left/right more than a few degrees... with a bit of elbow grease I was able to get through the stiffness, and the problem went away.

Fast forward to today, and I notice there's power steering fluid on the underside of the boots... wtf? Did I blow the seals, or did they fail prematurely?

The rack I bought was a Vision OE remanufactured rack (VIS-103-0210), as it was the most reasonably priced at $185 before core. Anyone else used one of these?
 
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