TRW Power Steering Rack De-Power (or Rebuild)

[jetrinka]

Really great write-up. I might have to try this.

Would you consider this for an occasional street driven car? My motivations are to simplify and clean up the engine bay.

[hEaT]

Really great write-up. I might have to try this.

Would you consider this for an occasional street driven car? My motivations are to simplify and clean up the engine bay.

Thanks. And that's what my car is. I haven't even had the car to autox this year. It's usually a weekend fun car I go on cruises with.

[DSPXR4ti]

Really great write-up. I might have to try this.

Would you consider this for an occasional street driven car? My motivations are to simplify and clean up the engine bay.

Thanks. And that's what my car is. I haven't even had the car to autox this year. It's usually a weekend fun car I go on cruises with.

The thing I'm worry about is in a slalom when your turning back and forth very fast at an autocroos and pray you don't get behind the set of turns. Just thinking out loud.

I'm 52 so muscling my cars around may not be on the horizon.
Ben

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Don't remove the plug in the center. It will break and seals the rack. I had to make my own at the end and seal with silicone.

I was confused by this comment at first, as I thought you were talking about the dust cap visible in this pic, and then a couple steps later you go ahead and remove that dust cap. I presume then that what you're talking about is a little plug which WAS in the center of this fitting, which you regrettably did remove, yes?

FWIW, I'm on the fence about whether to do this with my TRW rack currently in the Brat. Right now I'm just running it as an unmodified non-power steering rack, and I'm not happy with the amount of effort required. But I'm wondering if the effort will be reduced significantly if I modify it as you've discussed here.

[hEaT]

I was confused by this comment at first, as I thought you were talking about the dust cap visible in this pic, and then a couple steps later you go ahead and remove that dust cap. I presume then that what you're talking about is a little plug which WAS in the center of this fitting, which you regrettably did remove, yes?

FWIW, I'm on the fence about whether to do this with my TRW rack currently in the Brat. Right now I'm just running it as an unmodified non-power steering rack, and I'm not happy with the amount of effort required. But I'm wondering if the effort will be reduced significantly if I modify it as you've discussed here.

Correct. There was a small plastic/rubber piece in the center which doesn't need to be removed.

The effort is a bit less when you remove all the guts from the rack. My main reason was simplify things since I wasn't going to run P/S again in the car and didn't want the awful ratio manual rack in the car.

[TexasOil]

So has anyone done this on a ZF rack? Any notable differences than what's listed here?

[DSPXR4ti]

[quote="TexasOil"]So has anyone done this on a ZF rack? Any notable differences than what's listed here?[/quote]

I have one and it's great, just a better feel through the steering wheel, A little hard to steer on grid but other then that works great and saves 12 lbs off the front of the XR.

Ben

[TexasOil]

[quote="DSPXR4ti"][quote="TexasOil"]So has anyone done this on a ZF rack? Any notable differences than what's listed here?[/quote]

I have one and it's great, just a better feel through the steering wheel, A little hard to steer on grid but other then that works great and saves 12 lbs off the front of the XR.

Ben[/quote]


Just for clarity, you performed the procedure outlined in the OP for that result?

[boost_is_fun]

The power steering is out on my 89 XR, but the rack hasn't been de-powered yet (I don't know if the power steering is repairable, but I like it just fine without). how much of a difference does it make? I don't think the car is particularly hard to turn at low speeds even without de-powering the rack, but if it isn't to hard too do, I think I might do this.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

The power steering is out on my 89 XR, but the rack hasn't been de-powered yet (I don't know if the power steering is repairable, but I like it just fine without). how much of a difference does it make?

As Joe indicated above... "The effort is a bit less when you remove all the guts from the rack."

I've heard it suggested that a power rack which hasn't been modified for manual use *may* have a small chance of locking up. I don't know how true this is, but I'll throw it out there any way. Also bear in mind the fact that when/if you go with wider tires the required effort will increase.

[boost_is_fun]

good to know, thanks.
I had heard the same thing about potential lock-ups, but my car has done 2.5 years and about 7000 miles de-powered, so I'm not all that worried about it.

[hEaT]

OP updated with correct image links. Thanks Mark!

[MarkM]

Fixed image links below...can someone please update the OP? BBCode is disabled it appears.

Yep, original post has been updated.