Steering Rack Removal

[Bruce Wayne]

wow !! no one removed a steering rack from a 986 ??

[itsnotanova]

In my opinion, I think you should remove the whole front suspension. You'll have better access to the repair and it will give you a chance to maybe find anything else that might need some attention. How many KMs are on your box? I say if it's over 128,000, you should maybe consider rebuilding the whole front end too. That will depend on what you find. You say the car's put away for the winter anyway. Taking the whole front apart isn't that difficult. About the only negative I see is that you'll have to get it realigned when you're done.

[Gilles]

Originally Posted by Bruce Wayne

wow !! no one removed a steering rack from a 986 ??

Bruce,

Before removing the rack, remove the two hydraulic hoses that supply the hydraulic fluid to the rack, these have a fairly small (square type..?) O-ring that most likely (hopefully) is the cause for the leak..

A couple of years ago I removed the entire rack because I was planning to tread the inlet/outlet ports of the rack to install an oil cooler, but a friend of mine with more common sense (and a real mechanic..) recommended against because the walls of the ports of the rack had fairly thin walls and I didn't want to risk it.

I ended cutting off the metal ends from the OEM hoses and welded AN connectors to them, using new OEM O-rings like the original design and so far, four years later (and about 60k miles) I have not got a leak so I cannot complain.

BTW, removing the rack from the car was surprisingly simple..

Good luck!