Speaking of steering... I did a few mods to my steering rack the other night. With the Jaguar steering arm and tie rod end where they are clearance for widere front rims is limited on my car. I'm going with 17x8" rims for the front at this stage but I'd like to possibly go to a 17x9.5 later with some wider front rubber.
To make a bit more clearance I've replaced the tie rod ends that where mounted on the underside of the steering arm with rod ends (or heim joints as they are sometimes called) mounted on the top of the steering arm. The angle on the arms in relation to the steering is pretty close this way so the steering geometry still good (possibly better now) but I'll have to re check the bump steer figures before I know for sure.
The rod ends are chrome molly and teflon lined and have a much higher rating than the original tie rod end. I machined the mounting washers with a wide lip so that if the ball in the joint does break or come loose the joint can't pull off over the washer. The washers and threaded sleeve are all done in bright steel so should be plenty strong enough. There is a left and right end thread in the sleeve that efectivley doubles the ammount of adjustment available as compared to using female rod ends.
This is probably pretty boring but I get a kick out of machining this stuff up. It certainly beats doing body work.
there's a pic here:
steering
Cheers