Steering Rack

Steering Rack

The steering rack is what helps turn the wheels of the vehicle. It comprises of many components but two of the most important pieces is the rack & pinion.
The pinion is a gear that engages on the gear called the rack, The pinion would be the most interesting part out of the steering rack.
This has several small holes in it & rotates to open up each hole to let oil through to lubricate each movement.

(Right) we have the right hand side boot & tie rod end.

(left) Is the left hand side tie rod end and boot.
The boot helps keep the lubricant from leaking out.
The tie rod connects to a spindle or steering arm.

(Left) is of the, inner ball joint, tire rod end & the housing.
The housing is what holds the pinion & allows the oil to flow through to the right parts.

(Right) is of the right hand side ball joint & the tire rod.
The ball joint allows the tire rod to move as the suspension moves up & down.

(Left) is of the housing & all so the oil lines the feed the oil down to the rack.
Also the pic below is showing the oil lines running down along the housing.

(left) is the housing which has been dissembled.
The pinion gear has been removed & the oil line.
When I say oil lines I mean power steering oil.

The power steering lines been removed & also the left hand side boot.

The pinion gear is to the left,
The pinion gear allows the rack to turn, when this action is applied the top half of this part will turn to open & close off the tiny holes to allow the lubricant through.

To remove the rack from the body, the lock washer & the rack bush both need to be removed.
In our case we had to drill a small hole through the body just above the lock washer to pop it out, after that the rack bush just slid out then rack arm needed to be slightly taped out.

(Right) is of us checking the ovality of the rack, This is to find out if the rack has been bent or not. 

Once all parts have been checked & replaced if needed to be replaced then we could put it back together, Our steering rack was in good condition!

Wheel Alignment

Wheel Alignment

Wheel alignments consists of adjusting the angles of the wheels so that they are straight up & down to the ground and parallel to each other. The wheel alignment is so the vehicle drives straight & also to maximum the life of the tyre.

Pre checks are done before the alignment is to take place some of these are:

Tyre Pressure

Tyre Condition

Any Play on the ball joints, steering rack & rack end.

Check the spare tyre too

When checking the the tyre condition we needed to check for the wear of the tyre - Toe wear, camber wear, centre wear, edge wear, patch wear & also cup wear.

When doing the alignment the vehicle needs to be on a hoist as the hoist is more level than the ground.

To the left the vehicle has been pushed on to a set of turn tables.

These are so we are able turn the wheels freely.

The video on the left is of the plugs getting put on the wheel clamp. These are put on so we can securely attach the wheel clamp to the rim of the wheel.

These are showing how we attached the wheel clamp to the wheel of the vehicle.

The three plugs attach to the rim, The two arms of the clamp are what clamps to the face of the tyre.

It is critical that the clamp is put on how you see in the pics.

This is so when the camera is put on it will sit perfectly straight with the wheel.

The beam is what slide's into the wheel clamp, The bit that attaches to the clamp has a camera that lines up to the centre of the wheel & send the the info back to the computer.
There are four of these & each one has to be set on the right wheel of the vehicle.
Passenger side of the car is number one, driver two, left rear three & right rear four.

Each of these have a level on them so we can get it dead straight. The reason for this set up is so we can turn the wheel & the beam will stay straight with out turning with the wheel

This showing what we see when we are doing the alignment. When turning the wheels on the vehicle, the wheels on the computer will light up green as we turn them 90 degrees each time.

This checking the run out of the wheels.

The video on the right is showing how the wheel run out is done.