MGB Register Forum

I have just replaced the steering rack on my GT, and whilst in there, I popped new track rod ends on and replaced the bearings and caps in the steering shaft U/J

Having bolted everything down, the steering seems really tight - my old rack had a slight knock and it tightened up a lot at the limit of travel, but the reconditioned rack I bought seems to have made things worse.

My initial thoughts were that the U/J wasn’t great. I checked it this morning (having refurbed it over the weekend) it did seem that maybe the yoke wasn’t sitting quite square, so I stripped it out and re-positioned the caps once more.

And it’s even worse than it was over the weekend.

Here’s the thing though, when I put the U/J back on, the steering column spline and steering rack stem spline didn’t line up and I had to put some lateral pressure on the u/j to get the top section in.

Does anybody have any thoughts? Could it be the rack is faulty, or j made a hash of refurbishing the u/j? Does the rack maybe need shimming or repositioning somehow?

For reference, the car is still in the air without wheels on, so I need to settle it in the car before tightening the rack bolts?

Did you pop the shims back as they came off?

It is your steering column to pinion alignment. Its a job I have been planning to do on mine once the weather improves. Alignment is set by adjusting the column on its bracket and also by adding or removing shims where the steering rack bolts to the crossmember.

To begin the alignment you need to slacken the column to remove the UJ between the column and pinion and fit a small alignment device in it's place. This provides better visibility of how close or far out the alignment is. Once the adjustment and shimming is done and the alignment is right you pull the column back, refit the UJ and tighten everything.

I did get as far as buying an alignment tool but doubt I will get round to this before mid March at the earliest. You will certainly get yours done first so PM me with your address and I'l post it to you to save you buying something you will probably only use once. I haven't looked for a source of shims as yet but presume the usual suspects will stock them in a variety of thicknesses.

Chris

Dick, you should read this article from Paul Hunt's website
http://mgb-stuff.org.uk/suspensiontext.htm#align

He mentions that MG specified a special gauge consisting of two cones. Read about that here:
http://mgb-stuff.org.uk/sca.htm#1

Bumpa wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 4:50 pm Dick, you should read this article from Paul Hunt's website
http://mgb-stuff.org.uk/suspensiontext.htm#align

He mentions that MG specified a special gauge consisting of two cones. Read about that here:
http://mgb-stuff.org.uk/sca.htm#1

Thats just what I bought and will lend to Dick.

Thanks for the replies everyone, you’ll be pleased to know that the ‘problem’ is on its way to being sorted.

Firstly, I checked Paul’s suggestion with the shims and they all appeared to be there. I removed the filler cap on the rack and, obviously, it was dry - why I even thought a rack would be shipped with oil, I have no idea. The alternator was in the way of filling, so I moved that out of the way, and then I popped some ep90 in and bled it through a number of times, but I don’t think there’s enough in it yet so I may need to think about how I’m filling it. I’m really good at removing distributors now, so that’s a bonus.

Chris’s suggestion of the alignment really helped - I googled the tool and, well, to cut a long story short, I had some delrin rod in the scrap bin and access to a myford super 7, so I now have something which looks like Chris’s tool!

Overall, the steering is now many times Bette Ethan it started, so I’m grateful for all of the suggestions. I’ve got the rest of the week off, so I’ll pop some more oil in, then it’s onto the other outstanding tasks. Oil cooler lines, air filters and a bit of a clean up.

With any luck, the weather will be good enough to go for a drive at some point.

Interestingly, I popped the thermostat cover off as a part of the cooling system rebuild and… no thermostat. I’ve put a new one in, helpfully I won’t find out why it’s missing when I’m miles from home!

Was it a brand new rack? The ones I have heard about (made in Argentina I think) have been lubricated with grease and shouldn't need oil. I have failed completely to stop my rack from leaking oil so when it was apart I packed it with grease, and now 13 years later it is still fine. Interestingly, Paul Hunt on his website speaks of the impossibility of stopping the rack from dripping. I copied this from that page:

Lubrication: The oil to be used is the same as in the rear axle. Early racks had what looked like a grease nipple in the upper part of the pinion housing, but this was for oil not grease - 'ten strokes of the oil gun but no more' according the Workshop Manual. The capacity is shown as 1/3rd Imperial pint, 0.19 litre, 0.39 US pint. Put too much in and you can burst a gaiter, so if none leaks out between service intervals you wouldn't want to keep pumping more in. However 'old' racks don't seem to be able to keep their oil, changing gaiters on both mine at various times I refilled and it spent the next several months dripping out again, and others have said the same. 'Empty' when I removed the gaiters, but the innards were liberally coated with oil, so I don't think it matters much as long as you keep an eye on the condition of the gaiters.

When I put my original rack back in a few.weeks ago with the original shims it was really tight.
I bought new shims and they were a little thicker and damned expensive.

I ended up having to pack the rack up on both front and rear bolts with washers then shim the rear bolts to get it to line up and become as free as it was before I removed the rack.

I didn’t move the crossmember or remove the UJ and the steering wheel was lined up correctly on the splines to allow the UJ bolt to be refitted.

I have no idea what the issue was, but perhaps cleaning years of corrosion off the alloy castings upset the alignment.

It’s a frustrating process to get right.