I kept looking at my 6's nasty looking steering rack and was gonna send it out for a rebuild. I figure why not try to do it myself. I found a thread over on PP which had lots of info so apart it came. I'm gonna replace the two bearings which are on order and should be here by Sat. Cleaning the rack was a real PITA otherwise pretty easy job to do. The puck was almost new looking and showed very little wear on it. The grease was breaking down within the housing so I'm glad I did this. All other wear parts like the outer bushing and seals seamed all in great shape. I guess being parked in 1983 helped out by preserving some of the parts. LOL

When I get the new bearings in and installed the new turbo tie rods will go on as well.

I did mine recently as well and agree it isn't a bad job, especially if you are fitting turbo tie rods since that eliminates the need to maintain correct angles. It is worth looking at the factory manual because they have a few tolerances and procedures that are worth looking at to make sure everything is up to snuff when you are done.

You will run into 2 things.
The end bushings wear
and the puck tension

One of the reasons we never sold the outer bushings is that we actually hone them to fit each rack.

The puck tension takes us about 4-5 shots to get right - also takes a special tool if you follow the manual. As far as the advice on the orientation of the ends, he's right. Unless you go to turbo tie rods.

Also clean (we actually polish) the main shaft and the dive gears to check tolerances. We have actually found one that had too much wear. Not that it couldn't be used but you could feel the slop.

There's lots of work we put into these that the customer never sees.
Mainly all new tight tolerance parts and polishing