Sunday, 28 March 2010

DHC report nr. 80; Finishing touches front suspension

At last managed to not forget to take a pair of lock nuts (for the track rod ends) home with me yesterday. After a good clean of the nuts, I went over to the shed this morning to fit the track rod ends ... at last!
First thing to do was to make sure that the steering rack was in its centre position. On the original racks that is pretty easily done by removing the grease nipple (or plug), put a 3 mm drill in backwards in the hole and move the rack till the drill drops in the hole that’s machined in the rack for this purpose.
Sadly this (aftermarket) rack doesn’t have this provision, so I needed something else to get the rack centred. Easily sorted with AutoCad and a piece of thick paper in a printer.



With the rack centred, fitting the track rod ends proved to be fairly easy. Although it looks like the one on the right hand side has some damaged thread inside as the last few turns went pretty stiff. Put them on 15 turns each, before locking them. The exact alignment (toe) will be done when the car is back on its wheels.




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