Today's job was to get the steering rack back together. I can't progress any further with the gearbox as I'm waiting on some parts. I expected them during the week but they didn't turn up. There's plenty of other jobs to do in the mean time.
I bought a reconditioned rack but stuffed up when machining the input shaft. I was going to swap the input shaft from a spare rack but whoever had recoed the rack had mangled the roll pin that retains the shaft so I couldn't get it apart. I had a good spare one I picked up at a swap meet so decided to use it instead.
I stripped the rack down and checked it out internally. It seems to be OK. I bead blasted the housing and repainted the valve assembly. A few new O rings some fresh grease and a bit of adjustment to the pinion and it was good as gold.
I picked up a nice stainless steel Universal joint that is designed for 3/4" double D shaft which is what I had the old manual rack set up for. Splined shafts are not to bad to machine up but double D is dead easy so I went that way.
That's one more job marked off the whiteboard list.
Cheers