Steering Rack Play

That's the only adjustment on the rack itself, so its definitely worth a shot before buying a new one.

I ran a depowered rack for a while - it was 'OK' - when rolling it wasn't annoyingly heavy, but at times it's heaviness would surprise you, eg. when tanking up to a large roundabout, gently turn in to the left then pull right to apex the roundabout and 'ooohbuggerthatsheavierthanIexpected', cut back left exit the roundabout and 'oofIwasexpectingitthattiimebutitsstillalotofeffort'...

I swapped to a manual rack which is better for road use IMHO, although slightly lower geared so more turns for tight corners on a track...

When playing with steering racks, make sure everything is tight...



this was earlier today, a Volvo 940 Turbo (so big car thats not slow)

previously someone replaced the ns track-rod but might have forgotten to tighten it?

Pirates & cowboys everywhere

Rich.

Rich.

Yeah that Big Nut is the locking nut for the smaller central nut, which winds pressure onto the spring that acts on the yoke thingy, which bears on the rack. 
The subsequent pics on that thread show it coming apart. 

Correct. There's a narrow sweet spot that takes a bit of time to find - too slack and it will knock, too tight and it'll be stiff.

Just in case anyone is going to try this, I thought I would post my experience.

I looked up the guides online, which say tighten the adjustment screw to about 4.6Nm. This actually felt too tight even as I was doing it, so I ended up doing it by feel (though the guides are for adjusting a rack on the bench, not still attached to the car - plus are probably not for a rack with 200+km on it!).

While the front of the car was in the air I tightened the screw until I couldn't detect any play at all when turning the wheel; and by tightened, I mean barely tight. Its a very fine adjustment. Even so, when I next drove the car, the wheel didn't really self-centre. Too tight - so much for my engineers feel!

I then marked the screw position and then backed it off approx 45deg and drove the car round the block with the lock nut undone. The steering felt normal but with some play. I then tightened the screw a little, maybe 10deg, (I can reach under my car with a spanner and adjust without lifting the car) and repeated. I kept doing laps of the block until I just felt the steering stiffen and become fractionally less inclined to return to centre. Then I backed the screw off a tiny fraction and locked the retaining nut up.

This may not be a very proffessional way of doing it, but I figure on a rather worn rack such as mine, it should do the job.

Hopefully that is useful to someone!