OK, i'm a little stuck, spent the weekend doing turbo tie rods and last night started the bump steer kit. Some background, front end is from (i'm told) 84 carrera. So underbody sway.

I go under the dash and loosen the knuckle bolt on the shaft, and make sure is has wiggle room, Under the car, the two bolts come out, sorta easy, using a 90 bend 17 mm.

It was pretty tight though, the tube it's mounted on, connecting the two sides of my front suspension was definitely in the way when getting the bolts to come all the way out.

With Alot of force and prying I get the spacers in, I'm not sure, but they seem to big, or i'm missing something, cause now the steering rack is unmoveable... That is not my only problem, the longer bolts supplied will not go in, The bar/tube is making them go in on a angle, meaning, the older shorter bolts were just short enough to not have this problem. This is where i left it last night. Am I missing something?

Ferg.

Hey Ferg

It's been a while, but I had no trouble at all using the longer bolt or getting to them
Don't think I needed a 'knee' extension either

Do you have a steel crossmember (which is basically a big round tube) or an aluminium one (kinda looks like a cast I beem)
On either one, the mounting tabs for the steering rack should have some offset so you can get the bolts past the x-member

Might help to push the steering rack up as much as you can ('till the top hits the chassis)
This should give you some extra clearance to wiggle the bolts in

Be carefull not to f-up the threads in the steering rack (it's aluminium, so relatively soft) and make sure you use the bolts that are longer than the ones that were in there originally

Good luck,

Jeroen

Jeroen,
Yep, I have the steel, tube cross member. and it does have some offset, but even my line of sight tells me it's not enough to have a straight shot in for the bolt, it''s really the bolt head that is causing the problem, so i'm going to look for a smaller allen top bolt in the same spec, in hopes that the smaller allen head will give me more clearance. The rack is already at it's max height, so no room there.

Ferg.

Hey Ferg,

I just checked a steel xmember that I have laying in the garage
You're right, it's gonna be a pretty tight fit

I thing you need to use the shorter of the 2 sets of bolts that came with the bumpsteer kit for the steel x-member
(those should still be longer than your stock bolts though)

The install I did was on a aluminium x-member, which may have more room

cheers,

Jeroen

ps, a Carrera front end should have come with an aluminium x-member

hes right shorter bolts for steel cross member. mine dropped in fine

I only got one set of bolts... I'm gonna hit the hardware on the way home tonight and try and find some allen head's, to gain some more clearance, i'll look for shorter lenghts as well.

you are right about the crossmember, I just went through my notes from when I bought the car, not a carrera front end, prolly SC or 77 "s" front end.

to be on the safe side of things, how much thread should engage into the rack?

thanks for the help,
Ferg

The bolts should have the length of the old/stock ones + the thickness of the spacer

cheers,

Jeroen

Thanks again for all the help. Just wanted to update that I finished the job and learned some things I thought I should share.

I solved the bolt problem for the steering rack by enlarging the holes in the spacers that came with the bump steer kit. Before they were just big enough for the bolt, which prevented the bolt from entering at a angle, along with the crossmember tube getting in the way, it made the job impossible for me.

Two, The thin wrench needed for tightening down the tie rods is the same as a headset wrench for bicycles! My "Park" brand bicycle wrench worked sweet.



Ferg.