Bora steering rack - pinion bearing question.

Good morning,
Bora #932 is in the shop for a final round of deferred maintenance before winter hits hard up here. The 520 miles of shakedown driving I was able to put on her this fall have been fantastic, and she has continued to show us what she needs. Front shocks, rebuild hydraulic pistons and switches, re-adjust timing chains, correct fuel pump...

... and now we are refurbishing the steering rack. I have parts from Jacques at MS, and Kerry at MIE, and I ask if anyone here has sourced the (2) pinion gear bearings [part #9 referenced on table 20]?

We have a solution to work with using a similar sized cone bearing, but I figured I'd ask here before we proceed with that.

Best wishes for the Holidays,
-Art

 

Nearly 38,000 miles. Wear is not the issue so much as one of the bearings' outer race had two pieces cracked off.

The rack itself shows evidence of recently being opened up/cleaned/worked on, so we speculate the race got cracked the last time it was reassembled.

We can't source an original bearing, so our work-around is to hone out the bore .030 to match a set of current production wheel bearings (coned for thrust) we found equal in depth, profile and ID.

Shim the preload to a drag of 15-20 ft/inches packed with grease.

Should be fine.

 

LOL - yes, those 9 grams of rubber .. reminds me of advertising for a male product: "For that extra sensitivity" ..