My front end squeaks a lot so I'm going to replace my front suspension...Should I just replace all the original parts, or convert to rack and pinion..a whole cross-over??? Has anyone done this? Is it worth it?

Ya, I would like to do the same thing. Why doesn't anyone make a rack and pinion kit for our cars? They make them for Tri 5's and Camaros and Novas. Anyone have any good info?

I have a 72 Chevelle and am currently looking into rack and pinion steering. I Just received an email from trz motorsports and they list a rack and pinion conversion for $491.50. It includes rack, mounting harware, steering shaft and u-joints.

I will ask a friend of mine that is building a Pro Street 66 El Camino. I know he converted his to rack and pinion steering... I'll let ya know..

Steve

I know there is a guy on here who has done it. Maybe a 68 or something. A search my result in some pictures.

The reason why you see rack and pinion steering kits for Camaros and Novas etc. is because they are a more natural conversion. The Chevelle poses a few problems with the steering gear in front of the engine crossmember. I have seen several A body R&P setups - all involved slicing up the front frame and engine crossmember.

Take a look at http://www.laurerracing.com to see the conversion.

Thomas

Ahh a subject I know a lot about. First off you need to buy a 500 dollar rack, second you need someone who can fab well to weld mounting brackets to the frame and route all the steering and U joints.

I did a conversion on mine along with a lot of other stuff, I bought a standard flaming river rack, then found out I have to have it shortened to MINI status because of bump steer problems that would occur if you just bolted it in. You need to have the rack inner pivot points as close to the inner pivot points for the lower control arms, this resulted in an 18" rack from end to end for me. They charged me like 250+ to shorten it, if I knew that it would net 500 in the end, I would have bought a billet Alston rack that comes in any width.

Once you had done this, you have to build a mounting platform, mine was a steel plate welded to the front of the cross memeber after I had chopped the nose off and boxed it flat. From there he had to route the steering u joints to make it all work and wallah it was all done!!! but it is NOT something you can 'just' do. I will try to take some pictures later and post them up. If you look at racks on camaros and race cars, every time you will notice the inner pivot's on the rack, and on the LCA's are pretty much in line. If anybody has any questions feel free to send me a message

ps marci, if you wanna cruise down one day and see it, let me know ;) lol

Marci,
Its called a grease gun :D Unless your going autocrossing or all out drag racing a rack and pinion setup is just overkill,IMO.

Yeah, it's definately overkill, only reason I did it is because I like to do stuff that nobody has... I have not seen a chevelle with a rack done like mine before. Oh and it saved a few lbs.

Also just ordered a set of AFCO tubular lower control arms, they are pretty nice pieces, full tube, spring pockets, shock mount, rod end inner pivot points and uses stock press in ball joints. Only 150 a side.

I would like to do the stearing box upgrade but its 300 bucks. The rack should have a better feel than than the upgrade Box. What is the weight savings? My guess is 30-40 pounds.

A little rack and pinion 101:

Don't forget that you are only talking about manual steering rack and pinion gears. Unless you are happy with the steering effort of your conventional manual steering Chevelle, you are most likely going to dislike the high manual steering efforts. The manual rack and pinion steering effort won't be any different than a manual recirculating ball gear effort if you have the same overall steering ratios.

There are two basic types of rack & pinion steering gears. The end-take-off (ETO) types and the center-take-off (CTO) types. ETO racks have the tie rods attached to the ends with the assist portion on the passenger side. CTO racks have very long tie rods that connect at the center of the rack.

The reason that you can't have a power assisted ETO R&P is that by design, you need a section of the rack with teeth for the pinion to engage (the length of which is roughly equal to steering arm travel). Then you need a section of rack for the hydraulic assist (again the same length as the tooth portion of the rack). Then you connect tie rods to both ends. In order to have sufficient rack travel (so that your road wheels go from full left to full right travel) you will end up with extremely short tie rods.

By having a manual ETO R&P steering gear, there is no need for the hydraulic assist rack section. This allows the teeth on the rack to be moved more toward the car centerline and the rack portion of the gear to be shortened. This will allow longer tie rods to be used. Note, that moving the rack teeth more toward the car centerline will also cause the pinion to move inboard as well. Now you steering column shaft has to snake over to the car centerline to attach to the pinion. Not necessarily an easy universal joint route!

If your front end geometry was designed specifically for a short tie rod R&P, you might get away with it. However, with a suspension designed around a recirculating ball gear and linkage system, a ETO R&P will result in unacceptable suspension and steering geometry with bump steer problems and a very large turning circle.

You will note that the 1968 through 1982 Corvette Steeroids rack and pinion kit has a Grand AM (Corsica, Cavalier, Sunbird, SkyhawK) CTO type. This system in a C3 Corvette has acceptable steering geometry.

One other thing, the C3 Corvette was designed as rear steer (tie rods connect to the steering arms BEHIND the road wheel center line). The above listed CTO racks were designed for rear steer. If you try to install a rear steer CTO rack in a front steer vehicle (like a Chevelle), when you turn the steering wheel clockwise (right turn) the car will actually turn left.

JIML82

I would like to do the stearing box upgrade but its 300 bucks. The rack should have a better feel than than the upgrade Box. What is the weight savings? My guess is 30-40 pounds.

Well I had a manual box on mine already, so the weight savings was probably not that huge, I'm going to guess maybe 20-25lbs?? maybe? But if you have a full power setup you will save a lot more. But on one hand, what kind of car is it? are you going to benefit from losing 45lbs? is your car going to be faster? probably not noticable. But when you already have a super light chevelle every little bit helps, but if you're sittin at 3550 dry 50lbs isn't going to do anything for you. I think my car is probably somewhere around 3000lbs without me in it, once it's back together I'll know for sure. I once weighed it with full bucket seat interior, full glass and steel and it was under 3200lbs, it has since lost A LOT of weight, yet still has all metal panels except hood/trunk/bumpers, and all glass except rear 1/4s

it's going to be interesting to see what it weighs.... and like I said, I did a rack mainly because nobody has done it and it looks more 'racecar' :)

J70chev I hope you keep us updated and maybe some pictures, that would be cool. My thoughts are if I were to rebuild/update the steering system with the better box and replace the drag link, tie rods and those other arm I cant think of the name of right now it would be a 500-600 dollar job in parts. If a rack kit were available for about a grand it might be worth it to get a couple different small benefits. Mostly an improvement in steering feel, I think it’s hard to beat the feel of a rack. The weight reduction MIGHT shave a small amount ET, 100# = a tenth (been proven and myth busted). And all-round performance, rough numbers 3700 pound car 62% front weight- remove 40# off front worth about 2% improvement by itself. Combine with battery relocation, aluminum heads and glass hood maybe 6-7% all together, might noticeably improve handling, braking and initial take off. I would not want to get rid of bumpers and fenders and glass to stay more streetcar. So might be worth the extra $500 or so. Unfortunately after reading the rack 101 it sound like the conversion gets quite complicated. Do I spend too much time thinking/dreaming about my Chevelle?

Its not that big of a deal to mount the R & P unit. The hard part is routing the steering shaft to it. I did mine complete with about 8 hours of labor and 350 $

Theres a pretty good chance a lot of the squeaking you hear is coming from the upper control arm, look at picture #17, spray some pb blaster or some type of penetrating oil at the ends of the cast iron bar you see in the picture. Good luck


Rob

I just got a chance to take some pictures, they are under my sig link to the Yahoo Gallery, and under the album 'Alky70 Fabshop' This should give you a better idea of how it all went together. Also keep in mind my engine is set back 8 inches from stock, so by having the engine back so far it was probably ALOT easier to route the steering linkage.

Enjoy!

All these questions about R&P and no replies to my pictures? did I take 'em for nothin :)

let's hear some feedback people! lol

Looks like nice work... nice rather *extensive* work ;-)

That center rack housing looks very very short too. Can't say that I have done any measurements to see what is typical/modern versus the Chevelle, but that looks almost unworkable.

Yeah, it is pretty damn short, but it was done by Flaming River, and I get complete lock to lock with a good radius (haven't measured yet) but the wheels turn pretty far. Even Alston Chassisworks makes custom rack's as short as 14 inches I believe, I'm sure they have it geared so you can get some kind of turning radius somehow.

Great job on it !!

What Oil Pan are you using that allows you to route the shaft there ? What headers are you using ? Did you have to do anything witht he " steering arm " that mounts to the spindle ? Mine had the ball joint surfaces at an angle so I milled them flat.

I sectioned over 1" from my crossmember and have maybe 3/4" clearence. I'm also running Hooker SC's and had to work around those also. And then I went with a Mustang style R & P instead of the Pinto ... still up in the air which one I prefer

I have custom built headers, and a standard Steffs almn oil pan, the motor is set back 8 inches so that provides pleanty of space for the shaft to clear. Once I get the motor back in I'll take more pics so you can see. I should actually buy a pan with a longer sump so I can hold more oil, but for right now it's a standard chevelle frame oil pan with rear sump. You can see the headers in some of the other pics, they are actually huge, 2 - 2-1/8 - 2-1/4 3 step headers. As for the steering arms, I will just drill out the angled hole and stick a straight bolt in it like we do on our circle trac car that uses big body spindles, then use billet spacers to space the tierods down for bumpsteer when I bump the front end.

Do you have any pics of your front end?

All these questions about R&P and no replies to my pictures? did I take 'em for nothin :)

let's hear some feedback people! lol



I cant see the pics ?