Hello, I need to some suggestion on my power steering rack.

Prior on another thread, I chimmed in about how my accord shakes during acceleration at a certain rpm and also during certain cruising condition. I inspected and found three things:

1. Driver side inner tie rod has massive play which can be wiggled with my hand. Solution is to see if I can tighten the assembly.

2. Axle on both side has slight play when I push up, down, front, back when I was under the car. I am not sure if they suppose to have play at all. Need some suggestions on this one.

3. I cut open the driver side rack and pinion boot which connects the loose inner tie rod and discover slight drops of power steering fluid. Inside the boot is slightly wet but not like it's flooded with power steering fluid. I have a new reman rack and pinion sitting right here with me that I bought yesterday but I begin to feel that the work involved is not worth fixing such a small leak. (I am not even sure if it's leaking because it's just a few drops of fluid)








So what do you think? This is all that have leaked out thru out the life of the car (who knows when it started leaking). It's my beater which I used for commute. I don't want to spend ton of money on it but at the same time, if it has to be done then so be it.

And about the axles, can anyone suggest how much play should there be?

Thanks so much.

 

You've exposed the inboard ball-joint. Is that ball/socket joint where the looseness is located? If so, then it needs to be replaced before it comes apart.

If the looseness is (for example) some threaded connection where that balljoint attaches to the rack, then maybe you can tighten it?

If you want to tolerate the leaking that sounds reasonable. Keep an eye on the fluid inventory, and occasionally open the boot & check.

You can feel some play on the axle, but it should be pretty small, say 1/2 mm or hopefully less. Again, if the axle isn't making noise (after the balljoint is fixed) then it's a judgement about the vibration.

My guess is the vibration will dissappear when you fix the rack balljoint.

 

Thanks Jim. The inner tie rod is loose due to the threading came loose so I'm just going to tighten it up. For anyone who tries to remove the inner tie rod with the rack in place on the car, use a 17mm crow foot wrench. Works like magic.

I think my axles are normal so I hope the vibration/thunking will go away once I put back the inner tie rod.

As for the leaking rack, I'm just going leave it alone because the rack I bought was incorrect. Apparently V6 and 4 cylinder has different rack and are not interchangeable. V6 cardone reman rack is $400....

 

Inners came loose? I haven't done this firsthand, but I think there are thin washers where you're supposed to bend the tabs up against the wrench-flats to prevent them from working loose.

 

Yea, there is a not exactly thin lock washer which is extremely tedious to bend them back into place to lock the bolt while it is on the car...not pretty but it's done