Nice Rack!

The rebuilt steering rack for the Jaguar arrived today!

Of course, I have a vintage rally coming up THIS WEEK… Thursday to be exact. That means I have three days to get the rack back on and align my front end. I drove home … stopped at John’s for more veggie oil… grabbed 55 gallons… enough to fill my newly constructed settling tank that I made Sunday… but I digress.

I immediately went to the barn, reinstalled the tie rod ends as close as I could to where they were before the rack went off to Terry’s Jaguar for rebuilding. Then I started to re-install the rack. Well… I finished reinstalling the rack… 4 hours later. Man… a lot harder to get it back on than take it out!

Getting it aligned and on the pegs was the first challenge. The next one was getting the bolts back in.

The rack is held on by 12 bolts. 6 are built into the mounts. 4 are safety bolts that hold the rack on, even if the mounts break. 2 short bolts run through the rack and mount, without touching the car frame. One of those last two bolts JUST WOULD NOT GO ON. It is still on my workbench. I’m hoping that having 11 of 12 on there will be enough to run for a couple hundred miles. What say you Paul?? Can I drive like this, or so I need to pull the whole damn thing out and do it again?

I plan on doing that anyway before I do the Montana Rally in September, but I really would like to avoid it between now and Thursday!

Anyway, It is back in and down on the ground again. Hopefully I can sneak away from work early one tomorrow or Wednesday and work on aligning the front end toe.

All my (updated) photos are here.