Elrick

I am putting my steering rack in and I am worried about not having it centered to the steering wheel correctly. My plan is this: when I turn the rack with a wrench, the wrench makes 2.25 revolutions so I am thinking if I turn the rack all the way to one end and then make 1 and an eighth turns it will be centered as long as my steering wheel is centered. will this do it? also, since my rack is 2.25 from stop to stop do I have a z rack and can I reference the part number on it to answer this? The part number on it is 26008290 2BH. Just curious if this is original to the car. Lastly, when I install this, should I put some grease on the output drive of the rack and what kind of grease? I guess this is more than 1 question. Thanks for all your recent help guys, god knows I need it.

WVZR-1

You actually shouldn't be able to miss on the centering rack and steering wheel. Your centering of the rack 1/2 of the total should accomplish that with the rack and with the steering wheel centered the "pinch bolt" at the intermediate shaft will assure you that it's indexed BUT I'm guessing you did tie rods while out of car. With wheels straight ahead and the wheel centered you want to adjust the outer tie rods before locking them down. If you left the jamb nuts where they were before disassembly you'll be close but there's no guarantee. The final centering will be accomplished when setting the toe during alignment.

Lube the pinion at the intermediate shaft? I don't know that it's important but maybe it's a "why not". A choice? I don't know but if you had some brake assembly lube a little would go a long way.

The 26008290 I believe was either cast in the housing or stamped in the housing and that's just a production number for that part and has no reference to the internals. It used to be that a rack could be ID'd from the 2 letter code on the cap at the bottom of the pinion. Later years not so. You know it's 2 1/4 - should be "nuff said"!