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Rack and Pinion

5K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  joe_padavano 
#1 ·
I am trying to find a rack and pinion conversion for my 1967 Galaxie 500. Thus far I have only been able to find Unisteer. On Jay Leno's Garage he had a Total Control Rack and Pinion unit installed into his 1966 Galaxie XL 500. However, I looked at Total Control Website and they appear to only offer R&P for Mustangs and Cougars.

Any other leads?
 
#4 ·
Jaguar XJ 6 has a rear steer rack. A jag is about the same width and weight as the Ford. It would take some planning to get location to minimize bump steer.
The most important consideration is the location of the inner tie rod pivot points. These MUST be located in relation to the suspension arms to minimize bump steer. If the rack has pivots that are too wide or too narrow, no amount of tweaking the location will avoid bump steer. The overall width of the rack or outer tie rod ends is irrelevant. Once you properly locate the inner pivots, the outer tie rods can be lengthened or shortened to fit the suspension design. The inners are the ones that drive the steering geometry.

One alternative is to use the rack from a GM N-body car (Grand Am, Olds Calais, etc). These are rear steer racks that mount to the outboard ends of the rack and the center tube actually slides back and forth. Many builders mount a "center link" to this tube, which allows you to position the inner tie rod ends wherever you need them. You can use the stock inner and outer tie rods from the car in question.





 
#7 ·
One more remark about custom r&p installations...to get the "effective" Ackermann angle right (in a corner, he inner wheel steers more than the outer one) a rear-steer application needs the rack c/l to be a bit behind the line drawn between the tie rod pivot points on the steering arms. It might be safe enough to just measure where they put it on the car the rack is coming out of, and duplicate that. Tie rod length would of-course duplicate the original Ford. Hopefully the Ford front-sump oil pan would clear.
 
#8 ·
You'd certainly want to mock up a custom rack installation and use a bump steer gauge to check out different rack locations. I assume that a "center link" bolted to the N-body rack and with the same locations as the inner tie rod end pivots for stock might be a good starting point. Of course, the stock center link moves forward and aft slightly as the pitman and idler arms rotate (that's called a four-bar linkage in mechanical engineering) while a rack only moves side-to-side. I've seen builds where adjustable parts were used for the center link and tie rods to allow easy changes to the steering geometry for quick trial-and-error tests.
 
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