LHD E36/E46 steering rack swap

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Moderator: martauto

Grrrmachine
E30 Zone Wiki / Team Member
E30 Zone Wiki / Team Member
Posts: 8043
Joined: Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:00 pm
Location: Warsaw, Poland

Post Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:00 am

This is a very long shot, but I thought I'd pick a few people's brains.

I'm looking at fitting an E46 rack but my car's LHD, so the Wiki info doesn't apply. The Yank forums have fully-documented writeups, and some even sell special kits to help you. These kits basically comprise of spacers between the rack and the subframe, and some other spacers to modify the steering knuckle, like so:

Image

However, while trying to pick up a spare knuckle to practice on, it seems European steering knuckles look very different to their US counterparts:

Image

I've found one German site that says this Euro knuckle doesn't need any modification AT ALL, and that the rack bolts straight up (with the 14mm spacers). I just need a second opinion - is it really that simple?
DanThe
E30 Zone Team Member
E30 Zone Team Member
Posts: 28649
Joined: Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:00 pm
Location: Staffs

Post Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:33 am

That looks like an E21 or similar age linkage :?
For a manual rack, its too long for a PAS rack
Grrrmachine
E30 Zone Wiki / Team Member
E30 Zone Wiki / Team Member
Posts: 8043
Joined: Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:00 pm
Location: Warsaw, Poland

Post Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:50 am

And yet, if you stick the part number for a LHD E30 with power steering into Google Images, then that's what shows up :?