Steering Issues

[nisskid]

Hey, recently i was at a drift practice, and it was my first outing with new rack spacers put in that give extra lock, extremely handy, but nearing the end of the day i noticed i lost a lot of power steering. now there were quite a few hard spin outs at high speed which meant it hitting lock hard a few times, most of the time i controlled it, but it still hit the end of the lock hard on a few occasions. now this is nothing new, in the past i have had hard spin outs, but never with rack spacers. as i was pulling into the pits i noticed the steering was a lot firmer. it seems to have decent power steering on start up, but after about 1 minute u lose a lot of power steering and especially at lower speeds the steering in much firmer.

now my guess is a damaged rack, not such an issue, i will just swap them over, my worry is that maybe the rack spacer giving extra lock could be contributing to the damage, and that with the new rack, once i put in spacers and have a few hard spin outs, im going to be in the same situation.

i guess i can get over the lack of powersteering, doesnt really bother me and at the speeds u see on the track, i wont (didnt) notice it much, but since the swap will be relatively cheap, i have no worries about doing it for daily driving, i just dont wanna do it if its going to f**k up again.

thoughts?

[Dan_J]

i remember the d1nz.com guys saying if you put too many spacers in the rack for the one near the brake master (not the ones near the engine cross member like your spacers) that it will lock up steering (on full lock)..... something to do with leverage?

if it really is that, i guess theres some way to iron it out and keep the spacers but with the need of some mods in general?

or tyres/wheels hitting chassis on full lock thus slightly bent steering rack rods

thats all i got

Edited July 19, 2008 by Dan_J

[nisskid]

hey mate, pretty definite tyres arent hitting chassis rails, id say they would be close though, currently running 225/45's on 17x9 +24's, were scrubbing when i went through inspection with stockies (225/50's on 16x6.5 +40ish?), so probably around 20mm more inner clearance than the stockies which were fouling pretty hard.

as far as the steering locking up, not 100% sure what u mean, there is some binding which means at full lock it doesnt return as easily, but thats fairly normal, on full lock the engine would stutter and struggle, but i was told that was fairly normal as well, although made it bloody hard to start the car when ud spin out on full lock and the car would stall.

id rather have stiff steering with a damaged rack then not having spacers.

[nisskid]

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