What were the symptoms that made you decide it was indeed the rack?

 

well everyone that has seen it said rack and pinion...along with the tow truck driver who said he had a civic hatch that had the same problem but sold it...i havent had time in the last week or so to take anything apart to check anything...but everyone says its the rack and pinion...and it pulling hard when i get in a groove in the road makes me feel it was going bad...and the wheel not being center after it skipped a few notchs....then it skips a few more then i had no steering at all....


do you feel it could be something else???

 

I have the same with road irregularities, but it has not skipped a few notches. Crappy thing is, if the road is flat, the car steers and rides perfect. There's no slop in the steering, no unusual clunks, nothin. But then when I hit some ruts, the steering is all over .
That's got to be my problem, everything else besides the rack and inner tie rods have been replaced.

 

I would go with the rack n pinion....I personally replaced mine in my garage with a jack and two jack stands....it is a bite in the ass, but if you have general knowledge it really isnt a big deal....I was swapping out my rack for a better ratio rack, but it is the exact same process...if you have power stearing which I assume, just make sure you dont muck up the lines.

 

i do not have power steering...and b4 it went i had mad slop in the wheel

 

I'm going to "try" and fix my one upper arm (alittle confusion on the final tightening of the bushings), then swap on my narrower winter wheels and see if it's any better. If not, I guess I'll have to swap the rack out.

 

You can get a used upper arm and it'll all be assembled. May not last as long but I have gotten 150,000 out of used ones. The yard can usually tell you how many miles they have on them.

 

I found some at a pick n part, but I probably wont be able to budge the bushings, if I have to adjust them.

The new one I have installed, tightened when the supension was weighed down, sits under the inner fender. The other one, used, sits way up in the area around the spring.

Probably a big point you don't know, I'm running H&R OEM sports with Bilstein HD's, supposed to lower 1/2 inch, looks more to me. If it was stock height I could just use used ones and they would be at the correct height. Therein lies my problem, one upper arm is at the stock height and one is at the lowered height. I also may get adjustable ones.

 

I just read in another post about looking in the HELMS manual. There are alignment marks showing how to align the bushings and it looks like those ones get tightend before they are installed. Many of the ones you buy to install include the bushings and you don't have to F with it. But it looks like some don't come that way.

 

loose yoke...