If you lose tierod connection to steering rack, you could have loss of steering control. I would not trust any glue or bonding material.

See youtube videos on steering rack replacement. It doesn't look to be terrible on Accords, but no fun under the car for such extended effort. Might be worth paying for help w/ a lift rack. Following video is for civic, but accord should be similar.

An Accord video:

good luck

 

What you mean by lift rack? You mean, asking a shop with a lift to do it?

Thanks again, yeah losing control on the road can be scary/dangerous situation

 

Thanks again for your help guys.

Should I buy a refurb rack/pinion from ebay or go to a boneyeard?

 

Given the level of effort to replace the rack, I would go w/ rebuilt unit. However, I have no info on particular brands of rebuilts.

good luck

 

As always, thanks so much for your help.

I wanna give a try/shot to helicoil insert, do you guys have any suggestion about it? I mean which size I should try for it?

Also, any suggestion about thread repair kits?

 

Check youtube videos on helicoil use.

Make sure there is enough surrounding material to allow the helicoil insertion.

good luck

 

Thank you, one last thing before I explore this option.

Do you think helicoil will be good enough to hold that much stress/load of a steering/inner tie-rod?

Because if not, am not trying to be super cheap, can go ahead a buy a reman rack/pinion.

Safety is more important than money

 

I have no idea how structural integrity of rack might be affected by use of helicoil. You might check helicoil website for guidelines on use.

If it were my car, a major consideration would be possibility that helicoil will be a dead end; failed tapping operation, too difficult access, etc.

Rack replacement looks like a long weekend at least.

good luck

 

Thanks, I don't see a problem in terms of tapping, because rack comes out of it and if there is no tie-rod and boot, part is easily accessible as you can see from my pictures.

My only concern is structural integrity, as steering goes up and down all the time, with lots of force and load.

Replacing a rack is definitely a last option, NOT sure how expensive heli-coil is, but if it's same as reman rack/pinion, then reman is a better option.

Any experts out their who can chime in about helicoil use and all?

 

Helicoils are cheap & they're pretty strong in themselves.

The strength problem comes from enlarging the threaded hole to accept the coil. The ideal situation is where the surrounding material is very wide, for example a threaded hole in a large flat plate.

So enlarging the hole in the end of the steering rack will leave the remaining material weaker than the original. So it's not real obvious to me whether it's OK or not.