One rack out and another in
I had thought it would be frustrating to start and end the day basically with the car in the same state, but it wasn’t because now we have steering!
All this hard work… a few nuts, bolts and a sawzall later…
And the Corvette rack experiment is out. I should probably go back and redo all those posts saying it was going to work…
In its place goes an Appleton rack I found for a steal! This is a really nice piece and being a real racing rack there are options to tweak it if needed. Unfortunately only one of the two shipments I was expecting showed up. The rack bracket and longer tiedrod sleeves? Nowhere to be found. Not a problem, we have fire and lots of spare steel! First step was to mock the rack up and clearance the subframe for it.
Todd busting out the torch.
Several tries later this is what we ended up with. Lots of slag but that is what a grinder is for.
Unfortunately the motor had to come out to finished welding. It came out rather easy, but we knew putting it back in was going to be a challenge.
More test fitting….
After some clean up we were ready to start welding in the bracket and filler plates.
Several hours later we had it finished.
We could not have lucked out anymore on the steering shaft. It lined up perfectly.
These headers must be reserved for a circle in hell! Sliding the motor back in took about and hour. Bolting up the headers was nearly double that!
12 hours of work later we have functional power steering! We are almost ready to make the A&M practice next weekend. Fingers crossed we can do it!
GoPro
Red Line Oil
Oversteer Garage 
Looking good…….
Sent from my iPad
I know this is old but I would like to do this on my 73 Firebird. How would this work on a street car? Thanks.
Edwin, sorry for the delay in responding. The steering ratio is extremely fast, I don’t think it’s something you’d want to do for a street car.