Hi,
I took the Boxster to a local reputable shop for alignment a few months ago. They did a thorough inspection on the car (which I didn't ask for) and found a couple issues including the steering rack being faulty. They said it had an excessive play and refused to do the alignment (they charged me for half of the labor). They gave me a qoute for the replacement and for all the jobs that they thought was necessary. They included pictures and videos, including this one below that they think demonstrates the excessive play:
https://youtube.com/shorts/yC4KmsWmzf8?feature=share
When I looked at the video I found it a bit odd, also I could not detect any obvious play, but I thought, OK, they are the pros, they know what they are doing, also pretty much every single main part turns out to be faulty in this car, so I just ordered a low-mile rack from ebay and swapped them out. When I inspected the old one again, on the bench, I saw no problem with it, no play in any direction, no leak, tie rods also fine...
Long story short, I took the car back, this time they were able to do the alignment. I made a note about the apparently perfectly functional old steering rack which I took with me also. They didn't look at it, they didn't really understand my concern and asked why I brought the car back if I didn't trust their judgement in the first place.
Anyways, I learnt how to replace the rack in the Boxster and the car runs fine and straight, which is a good thing. On the other hand though, it appears to me that I wasted quite a bit of time on a misdiagnosed problem and replaced a part that was not necessary. I wonder what had happened if I had told them to do all the suggested work - they would just have replaced the rack like I did and charged me accordingly?
How do you guys see this issue?
Boxster
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