Well, I am about to embark on a task I said I would never do again.... Change a steering rack on an N-Body car (did it once, by myself was a pain in the butt).

Last night, luckily not far from home, I had a "pop" sound and lose of power steering. Without popping the wheels off, I am pretty certain at 214,000 miles and general area of fluid, it's the rack.

Last night a friend of mine and I dropped it off at a place we call "The Shop" (a rental garage/storage space a friend has that we use often for car work, no lift, but hey, it's inside out of the weather, as of all things, this is a weekend with snow)!

I'm praying what I've learned since the first time improves chances of success this time (and dis-assembly goes as easy as it did on the last one I did about 2 years ago).

Wish me luck gang!!

 

Good luck, i know its something I wouldn't do lol. Thats a lot of miles on a pretty old car. ever thing of replacing it?

 

Jason I did one once on a caravan. I had to drop the engine cradle to get it out. If you havent replaced them already it's a good time to replace the outer tie rod ends. Good luck

 

Good luck. I hope everything comes apart easily.

 

UPDATE: Inspected and confirmed, the rack blew. The N-body rack (at least mid-90's) has what looks like a plug pressed into the end. After enough years of use, age, rust, it just pops out. Yep, that's what mine did. The rack I got from the parts store to the tune of $80 (after I return the core) is a reman unit. When I studied it, it looks like the original plug is in that end and that the reman company welded it in!!! I came SOOO close to calling my father and telling him to load his welder up and meet me at my friend's garage (we call "the shop") and seeing if we could degrease that sucker and weld it in place (part of me is STILL wishing I woulda tried that).

Anycase, I've done one other steering rack in my life, same model car (my wife's Grand Am, 6 months about before we sold it and she got the Impala she now has). When I did it that time, I did it 99% by myself (huge, HUGE mistake, it really helps to have someone help guide the rack out and slide the new one in).

I knew getting into with this, it is a PITA job, the N-bodies are tightly spaced for this job. But, plus side is, dis-assembly was a breeze!! I made one mistake that cost me the need to replace the bolts that hold the inner tie rods. No biggie. My friend Jeff arrived to give me a hand and we got the old rack out pretty easily. We spent more time messing around with getting the steering shaft of the new rack back into the steering column (we ended up dropping the steering column, seating the rack and it popped together).

Almost done re-assembling, we got tired and said we're done for the night and will finish tomorrow after work.

@Lougreen03 - Thanks for the idea about the tie rods, I did those a while back, so I am good there. Also I've changed the high pressure steering hose a long time ago (part of the reason it disconnected from the rack so easy). I wanted to change the low pressure line just because I'm in the area and it would be easy to do (for an added $15), but NONE of the part stores have it and I'd have to order one (I was hoping to have the car finished before one would arrive, silly me, I guess I shoulda ordered it, but it's fairly easy to work with).

Alright, if anyone read this update and got to the end even I think it's a lot of blah, blah, blah. But hey, thanks guys for reading the moral support of MCF. I wish this was a rack on a W-body, it looks like those are a TON easier (a lot more space).

 

Jeez Jason. Never a dull moment by you, is it :p

Time to get a new beater Oh wait you did that... and it became a second nice weather car

 

Yeah, I know, I bought the Monte to be a DD, but since the Grand Am ran and had suck low value, it seemed more practical to keep the miles (and winters) off the Monte). It's worked pretty good so far.

 

Glad you didn't have too much trouble, The W body's are easier ..

 

Update - Done! Sorry no pics, but it's DONE! The Grand Am rolls again!! I'm tired and I can share more later (not that there really is much to share).