Broken steering rack?
#1
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While parking in the paddock for a recent track day, the steering wheel made a clunk and ended up 1/4 of a turn to the left while the wheels remained straight.
History is a fully depowered rack, seals removed and pinion gear pressed pinned, like so.
![Name: 3MwrUcMl.jpg
Views: 59
Size: 30.0 KB](https://www.miataturbo.net/attachments/general-miata-chat-9/231730d1683052869-broken-steering-rack-3mwrucml.jpg)
Superpro bushings, R tie rods. Works Bell hub adapter, NRG QR.
At a complete stop, the steering is very hard to turn until you start moving, this time I really forced it and something moved or jumped. We poked around, didn't see anything, Aidan's advice was RUN IT, I recentered the steering wheel with the QR and cautiously ran 2 conservative sessions with no problems.
Before I start tearing apart the rack, has anyone experienced this or have a guess what caused this? Did the pin snap? Can the rack slip in the bushings?
History is a fully depowered rack, seals removed and pinion gear pressed pinned, like so.
![Name: 3MwrUcMl.jpg
Views: 59
Size: 30.0 KB](https://www.miataturbo.net/attachments/general-miata-chat-9/231730d1683052869-broken-steering-rack-3mwrucml.jpg)
Superpro bushings, R tie rods. Works Bell hub adapter, NRG QR.
At a complete stop, the steering is very hard to turn until you start moving, this time I really forced it and something moved or jumped. We poked around, didn't see anything, Aidan's advice was RUN IT, I recentered the steering wheel with the QR and cautiously ran 2 conservative sessions with no problems.
Before I start tearing apart the rack, has anyone experienced this or have a guess what caused this? Did the pin snap? Can the rack slip in the bushings?
#2
SADFab Destructive Testing Engineer
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I looked at the splines on the ujoint on the steering shaft and they looked ok. Couldn't think of anywhere else it could have slipped. Most of the splined collections wouldnt have jumped, they would have just stripped out.
#7
SADFab Destructive Testing Engineer
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I highly doubt it could jump splines like that and then work fine again. If the splines let go they should have all stripped.
Alignment bolts might make sense. Thats still a lot to slip though.
Alignment bolts might make sense. Thats still a lot to slip though.
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kypn
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07-22-2016 08:11 PM