[mikentosh]

Well over the holidays I had the truck back apart again to put in a new steering rack I got from Flaming River. The reasoning behind this was an attempt to get more turning angle with a longer travel rack. These 79-93 racks that Flaming River builds in-house have about one inch of additional travel over a standard Fox-body rack. They also use the better o-ring style fittings from the newer cars, and come pressure tested.

I was hoping to keep this a bolt-in swap, but the one downside to these racks IMO is they feature Flaming River's "power" connection input shaft, instead of a standard 3/4 36-spline shaft. This meant a minimum of a new lower u-joint...but once the new rack was in the truck I found there to be more interference problems with my steering shaft setup. I ended up redoing most of the steering linkage, and also clearancing the frame some more.

While I was in there I also swapped the generic power steering hoses with some new ones that I made up from Earls pressure hose and fittings. The generic ones were far too long for this application and I had concerns about stress from the severe bends to get it lined up, so the fresh hose was an added bonus.

The end result was well worth the effort, as I've regained most of the original turning radius. No more 3-point manoeuvres just to get into a parking spot. An added bonus is the new rack is significantly smoother than the reman unit that I had in prior.