( Editing to add make: 1993 Festiva )
Hi folks--
After just replacing the steering gear (rack and pinion) --
I'm having extreme difficulty inserting and tightening the pinch bolt that connects the lowermost knuckle on the "steering gear intermediate shaft" (following terminology in Ford manual) to the input shaft of the steering gear (rack-and-pinion). I have another (used) set of the same parts so I can see how it all goes together and can see that the bolt won't slide in if the knuckle is positioned too high or too low on the input shaft. But even when everything appears to be lined up just right it's really hard to get it in.
The real issue is that all this is happening inside of that stiff rubber boot which makes it ultra-difficult to get my hand in there with the bolt and put the darned thing into place. I've tried attaching hooks to strings to pull the boot part way upwards but it doesn't really help much. If only one could just roll the boot up out of the way like a sock but of course it's way too stiff for that.
Turning the steering column so that the bolt should be inserted from about a 30-degree angle, coming in slightly from the passenger side rather than straight in front-to-back, seems to help a tiny bit, but not much.
Any tips on how to tackle this difficult problem?
I'm tempted to just give up and cut a big slice in the boot so I can peel it out of the way-- but would rather not!
Thanks for any tips--
(Btw the parts I'm using don't have any "key" that would require the steering gear input shaft to be positioned in one precise orientation, rotation-wise, relative to the intermediate shaft, to make the splines mesh. The other used parts I'm looking at for comparison do have such feature-- which would just seem to make the job even more difficult.)
Hi folks--
After just replacing the steering gear (rack and pinion) --
I'm having extreme difficulty inserting and tightening the pinch bolt that connects the lowermost knuckle on the "steering gear intermediate shaft" (following terminology in Ford manual) to the input shaft of the steering gear (rack-and-pinion). I have another (used) set of the same parts so I can see how it all goes together and can see that the bolt won't slide in if the knuckle is positioned too high or too low on the input shaft. But even when everything appears to be lined up just right it's really hard to get it in.
The real issue is that all this is happening inside of that stiff rubber boot which makes it ultra-difficult to get my hand in there with the bolt and put the darned thing into place. I've tried attaching hooks to strings to pull the boot part way upwards but it doesn't really help much. If only one could just roll the boot up out of the way like a sock but of course it's way too stiff for that.
Turning the steering column so that the bolt should be inserted from about a 30-degree angle, coming in slightly from the passenger side rather than straight in front-to-back, seems to help a tiny bit, but not much.
Any tips on how to tackle this difficult problem?
I'm tempted to just give up and cut a big slice in the boot so I can peel it out of the way-- but would rather not!
Thanks for any tips--
(Btw the parts I'm using don't have any "key" that would require the steering gear input shaft to be positioned in one precise orientation, rotation-wise, relative to the intermediate shaft, to make the splines mesh. The other used parts I'm looking at for comparison do have such feature-- which would just seem to make the job even more difficult.)
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