Steering arms, how to get them off

[DaveP]

I've bought a later type rack to replace the one in my tl, I've also bought new arms and balljoints. I cannot remove the old arms from the rack, there's no obvious place to get a spanner on it and the molegrips can't hold on, am I going to need the blowtorch and swearbox? Is there a tool I'm unaware of? Haynes is useless on the matter.

Any help gratefully received

Dave

 

[angel]

You will not necessarily need a special tool, although it's much easier if you have one (e.g. Facom T.275A or T.276A). These are universal track rod removal tools, not R4-specific.
You can undo these track rods by removing the rack, the driver's side bellows and clamping the rack in a vice from the toothed section. On the back side of the track rod ball joint there is a kind of a locktab, bend this back first. Then the track rod can be undone, but it is rather tight and the threads coated with threadlocker, so your best weapon is large pipe grips (i use a pair of about 70cm length). Blow torch not needed/wanted, swearbox optional!

 

[mr-reno-139]

have normally warmed joint very slightlywith blowtorch 20 secs aprox ( NOT RED ) as melts thread lock meaning once slackend will undo easily
make sure rackend is away from rack body or you will melt anti knock bush inside housing

 

[DaveP]

Thanks to you both, sometimes you need to hear that it IS just a brute force issue, I ground some notches in the round section heated the threads briefly and bolted the rack to a steel shelf, it finally shifted after some serious effort, my swear box is replete. Should I worry about a very slight play in the Passenger side bush? Is this a job one can do with ordinary tools?

When I finally get round to writing my definitive list of badly designed car parts, this will be on it. How hard is it to include spanner flats?

 

[angel]

Don't worry about rack end bush play, it is not dangerous but annoying (knocking noise).
The bush itself comes off easily after you remove the circlip at its outer end, and is rather cheap (ebay).

It would be nice if these steering rack ends had spanner flats...but only with the rack removed. That type of track rod was conceived with the modern ,transverse engine cars and bulkhead mounted racks in mind. It is fairly easy to loosen them while the rack is still on the car, but only if you have "infinite" positions to grab a spanner on (hence the round shape and special tool needed). I have come across track rods with six nice flats, but the spanner could not be inserted on any of them as there was not enouch room around it...and guess what happened in the end, I grabbed the pipe grips and loosened them in a pinch!