The topic of this has been gone over a few times and ill include links to a few of the threads for those thinking if this is right for them or not. I did this on the Rack of my red FD, which is finishing up heading into purpose built drag car. SO there’s no PS pump, so might as well not fight fluid in the rack if I don’t have to.

This write up will not be in full detail since my hands were covered in grease and if you have enough talent to get the rack out, you’ve got more than enough to do this conversion. I alredy used my brake bleeding vacuum pump to suck the rack what I thought was dry while turning the wheel. The rack still had over a quarter bottle of ps fluid in it….

The rack is held on to the sub frame with 4x 14mm bolts that go from the bottom in. Don’t sweat having a inner tie rod tool as once you have the rack off you can get them off much easier than while still on the car. Getting the tie rods off you can use a tie rod fork (10$ at pepboys) or if you hit the area on the spindle right around the tie rod it pops right out. But the fork will be the easiest for most on here. The Quill come off from the steering Colum once you loosen the 12mm bolt holding the spline shaft. A 12 and 14mm wrench will take the hard lines off the rack. You don’t have to worry about using a tubing wrench, there not in there super tight.

I’m going to start this write up from the rack out of the car, with all lines and inner tie rods removed.
Should look like this




On the flyingmiata site they remove the carrier first, I personally leave this to last just for shaft support reasons.

First things first, remove the dustcap (pulls off) and under the lovely peanutbutter colored grease there is a C clip remove this C-clip



Next turn over the rack, and remove the cap on the bottom (think it was 22mm) this will expose the quill retainer nut.




Remove this nut. You don’t have to worry about the Quill falling out b/c the carrier and the lower bearing have a pretty good hold on it.


Next flip over the rack, you are now going to remove the large lock washer around the large hex nut. (I used channel locks since my ¾ in drive with all the big boy sizes was forgotten @ home.)






Now unless you actually have a hex drive that large its time to fab up a SST





Amazing what a extra lug nut, random bolt and MIG welder makes ; )




Remove the large hex nut, under which will be a spring and the carrier.




Now move on to the left side of the rack, there is a little eyelet in here is where the retainer wire is.



Turn the end cap counter clock wise and you will see 1 end of the wire comes up and out of this access port. Keep turning counter clock wise until you get it all the way out, the other end has a small hooked tip that holds it onto the retainer, comes right off…

From there a few light taps around the edges with a small mallet it comes right off.



You into the home streach,
Tap the quill (on the bottom where you removed the retainer nut, and it will come right out (have a hand on it so you don’t drop it)

from here you going to have find something sutable to go in the side of the shaft by the quill so you can tap the rack out the far end. There is a small seal in there that needs some persausaion to come out. I used a piece of Almnium rod as to not damage anythgin.

Now using a suitable cutoff tool cut almost all the way through this, its hard steel so don’t think your going to get through it with a chisel with ease
Should look like this when done
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=226756&stc=1
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=226757&stc=1

There’s 2 ring retainers you can pry off

Now hit the parts washer, or if your not blessed with one clean off all the old grease the best you can.

On the flying Miata site the re-lube b4 putting it back in, personally I put it back in then re-lubed.

Re assembly is nearly identical to removal, I swapped the steps a bit but..

1- steering shaft back in
2- quill
3- quill retaining nut
4- C-clip on top of quill
5- Carrier, spring, hexnut (forgot the torque specs but don’t make it tight… turn the quill with your hand to find the right tension for yourself. You can make it easier or harder it turn the rack. I went a bit tighter since ill mostly be driving in a straight line ; )
6- Pipe cap that covers quill retaining nut
7- Retaining cap and retaining spring ( instillation is just opposite of removal, just put the little hook in the hole and go counter clockwise until its all in)
8- dust cover

reinstall tie rods, reclamp boots


Cut the hose ends off and fill them with a bit of weld….


TADOW you’re done….

I know Manville Charges 270 for this but I think that’s not deducting 50-60 for the core, and they clean it up. I don’t know if that includes shipping or not. But ill be happy to do it for 125 plus shipping. Since I have mine off the car for at least a week or 2, turn around will be 1 day. After than 2 day max turn around time for anyone who wants it done.

Ill do the full conversion, re-grease everything, weld all the nut holes, clean the whole rack, and do a little touch up where it’s needed. You can send it with or without the tie rods, if it needs a boot or anything you’ll be paying whatever Ray charges me.

Any Questions feel free to post up

Bacon7299@yahoo.com

 

Thanks for the write-up!

 

Ohh b4 anyone says it, I did this in the middle of finishing building a trailer, yes the workbench was a mess. But it got all cleaned up…
https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-gen-archive-72/how-de-power-your-steering-rack-right-way-440198/
http://flyinmiata.com/tech/depower.php?x=1
https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...ighlight=Maval

 

Great writeup, thanks a ton!


-s-

 

Great timing...I planned to do this very soon

Thanks for the write up Bacon!

Oliver

 

Did you weld the quill shaft?

 

Well that’s something I need to call maval and ask what they actually weld. I didn’t see any thing that needed to be welded or could be improved on. The quill was solid and had no deflection in it, I’m going to be doing another one in a day or so and ill take a little more time ad disassemble the quill to see if I can find it on my own. In regards to strength, the quill is plenty strong, Id be more scared of parts in the steering shaft failing first.

Glad this is helping a few out there, was driving me nuts the miata guys had one but we didnt LOL

 

Everything I saw while it was out, and can see from documents I dont know where to weld...or what part of the quill shaft their welding

 

You may not have seen flex with the system disassembled, but install it with 1500 pounds on the tires and leverage from the steering wheel...

No pics any longer, but these might help:
https://www.rx7club.com/showpost.php...02&postcount=5
https://www.rx7club.com/showpost.php...30&postcount=5

 

Found a picture!

 

Easy enough, going to need to pull it out and weld it tonight, Quill shafts will be welded here on out, No Additional charge naturally

 

Sounds like a deal. I'm not about to pull my rack now, but might have to do that next winter.

 

Does anybody have this done on a daily driver? Comments?

 

excellent write-up!! i'm planning to do this as soon as the chaos that is my life dies down. thank you for taking the time to shine some light on this.

 

Why did you cut this? I just removed the seal. If you dont cut it you can undo the entire mod for the price of a new seal. Other than that, nice writeup

 

Bacon, Great write up. For all those guys out there thinking pulling the rack is a straight forward job, I thought I would share a few comments about my experience.

For my car, it was not as straight forward as the FSM indicated it would be. I ended up having to pull my PS pump and AC unit in order to get to the bolt that holds the top line on the PS rack itself. I also had to drain my radiator and remove the lower radiator hose in order to be able to rotate the PS rack and slide it out of the car. And oh yes, I had to loosen all (4) bolts that hold the front subframe in place in order to drop the engine down to get the rack out. I'm still putting my rack back together (had to repair it due to leaks...not a manual conversion), and don't look forward to putting it back in the car.

I'm not a master mechanic by any means, but I have a nice shop in which to do the work and a good set of tools. Still was not the easiest job for me.

Perhaps this is what Bacon is alluding to this in his comment, "...if you have enough talent to get the rack out, you’ve got more than enough to do this conversion."

Richard

 

Great timing on this. I actually have my steering rack out right now, all cleaned up and ready to take apart. I was actually going to shoot some pics of the various steps and team up with Railgun to do a write-up, but I guess now we don't have to.

Instead of cutting the hard lines and welding them I was going to try finding some brass plugs. Not sure how easy they might be to find, but they would let me save the hard lines and revert back to P/S if I ever wanted (doubtful, but you never know). Either that or I could sell them off to someone in need.

thanks,
Mike

 

I’m not worried about ever needing to go back. Also since I was planning on welding the tube nuts, the thin gap where the seal was would still be buffered by the air in the part of the rack. Just additional weight savings lol.

Prob could just pull the seal, but I don’t remember seeing the seal on the parts fiche

I’ve pulled the rack off a complete car b4, such a PIA, my car is 99% stripped down getting ready for paint so it took me about 20 min to pull the rack, and 10 min was jacking it up and pulling the front wheels LOL But your 100% right , if you can get it out, this is a cake walk.

Thanks for the comments guys, I had been seeing this pop up here and there for a while so I figured some body needs to take a few pictures while doing it, I should have taken a few more but just got into getting it done and forgot for as bit b/c it was going so quick LOL
Ill post up some pics on the quill welding.

 

Ohh brass plugs would work great, its just tough to resist welding stuff when the welding machine’s sitting there staring at you LOL

This is one of those mods you like...... I’m done already???....only part that stumped us for a minute was getting the rack out (when I say rack I’m referring to the internal rack. didn’t want to foul the inner tie rod threads, so I was being to gentile with the hammer at first

 

I still would like to find out how this compares to a looped line in effort and feel of the wheel? Anyone?

 

Good job Bacon. I want to see the pics of the welded quill, get before and after weld photos please.

great job !

tom

 

Good write up...

 

very good stuff! mavel is either be happy they dont see fd racks anymore or mad that they are losing on business. great job.

 

I got my Maval rack back and it looks brand new. They do a great job but you definately pay for it over doing it yourself. It cost me $40 to ship it to them plus $270 for them to ship me back my new manual rack. Turn around was just the time it took to ship. So my total cost was $310 and 8 business days (I am on the other side of the country from them).

Kudos for taking the time to write this up. Had I seen it before I did mine I probably would have went this route! However, I am satisfied with the Maval rack, for sure.

Here is to manual steering! When, if ever, I get to steer my car (not including pushing it myself) down the road again!

 

As promised
For the quill you need to have a bearing splitter, disassembly is outlined in the FSM, after you get the upper bearing off its just moving down the quill, yet again I got ahead of my work. Little TIG on both sides : )