E36 Steering Rack Conversion

[wixer]

In the middle of doing this conversion, just interested in how others who have also done the conversion, have modified the column lower shaft. I was gonna follow the method in the Wiki but if there's a simpler way, I'd be interested.

Cheers

[wixer]

Anyone ?

[LeonNewton]

i did one and it wos almost a strate swop. i yoused spacers above the rack where it mounts to the car and i yoused a vice and a lot of time bending the pas pipes. not a hard job and made a change for the better. wiggaling the rack out was a bit of a pain.

[LeonNewton]

i did one and it wos almost a strate swop. i yoused spacers above the rack where it mounts to the car and i yoused a vice and a lot of time bending the pas pipes. not a hard job and made a change for the better. wiggaling the rack out was a bit of a pain.

[Dave_M3]

What car have you got?

Don't have to change the column on 318iS since they need to use the front holes in the subframe.

325i is a little close to the manifold so needs the E36 lower U-j and E30 top half just a solid spacer in between with four holes will do the trick.

Need to use about 14mm of spacers then underneath or above the rack (underneath is better) have to settle with overhead with M42s

I made up spacers out of aluminium and just got my own hoses made up as I didn't want to be pricking about with bending pipes as well as I can now have a pas cooler built into the return pipe.

[wixer]

Managed to sort it. Using 14mm spacers in the car forward mounting holes. I've ground off the pinion end of the E36 rack to where the pinch bolt groove is, as on the E30 lower column the groove isn't used at the bottom, only the top column joint. This has given me sufficient reduction in length to now get the standard E30 intermediate shaft on. The reduced pinion length still allows the intermediate shaft full engagement along it's spline length. It also makes getting the rack in a little easier.

For the hoses, I've had some made up at Pirtek, using a combination of E30 and E36 ends with extended hoses, for ease of fitment. Bit fickin expensive though !!

[DanThe]

I mounted mine yesterday with a custom linkage, used two E30 linkages cut down with a tight fitting alloy tube to join, it will be getting welded this morning.
The upper and lower splines are different types, so to prevent any hammering I separated the UJ's and rebuilt the one that fits the column end



Rack is mounted in the rear holes

How much did pirtek charge you for the hoses wixer? Got any pics?

[Dave_M3]

that looks tasty Dan, having a nice thin U-J coupling will give lots of space for the manifold too

A mate realised the two E30 U-Js can be just bolted together and doing away with the guibo and heat shield for the the E46 rack when fitting it to his iS last year

[wixer]

Pirtek charged me £112. I asked if they were gold plated unions for that price, bloke says it's the time it takes to make the pipes up. So two hours in gonna be best part of £100 I suspect. They do look a good job and having more hose will aid fitting and routing of pipes.

Not fitted yet, so will attempt to take pics when on but busy in the week with work and away most of the weekend rallying in Wales, so maybe next week.

[DanThe]

£112 is rather expensive!

A mate realised the two E30 U-Js can be just bolted together and doing away with the guibo and heat shield

You can bolt them together but this still leaves a lump not much smaller than the rubber spinning round, for an M50 conversion the more space for manifolds the better!

[Dave_M3]

Yeah, it's just a simple way of removing the usually worn rubber coupling to be honest.

A friend found out the hard way you need plenty of space from the column to the manifold on an M50 going around a left-hand corner rather spiritedly

Could have been worse however... car survived with just the Tec 2 front valance coming off and a broken sump.

[lee]

bing bong.

[Bob_S]

i was running a poly mount until i sorted my e34 coupling today and like dan, made my own upper uj so no pricking about