After many years of use the link between the powersteering rack and the steering column broke. I had planned to change the rack to a manual version.
Here you can see the failed link. It is a ribbed clamp around a splined shaft. The clamp had failed slowly.
I had several racks to choose from. The lower one is the old powersteering rack.
This is the new manual rack. For some reason the rack was too tight, so I used shims from another spare to fix this. Now it turns smoothly.
The manual system uses a different link between the rack and column. I had a new one, so I used that and the manual version of the column. .
Here's the manual rack and column in place.
To fit the rack I needed two identical mounting plates. The powersteering setup uses two different plates.
To set the tracking identical to the old rack I used this "template where I copied the positions of the balljoint ends in two holes. I set the new rack up so the balljoints fitted these holes.
This is the new rack in place. The first test runs show that the steering is true and smooth.
