steering rack bushing replacement

[motley1987]

I was under the truck today and noticed that the steering rack bushing is almost in two pieces. I can easily tear it off if I wanted to. So how hard is it to replace the bushing? I'm guessing the whole steering rack has to come out? If that's the case, should I look into replacing the steering rack since it has about 80k miles on it? Not sure if the rack itself is one of those things that needs replacing as the miles go up or what the symptoms of a bad steering rack even are.

Ben

 

[digglesworth]

If you replace it, you might as well upgrade to one of the rack mount kits and get rid of that flimsy oem stuff altogether...

 

[Pappibri]

My Steering rack was replaced under warranty 3 x . Now the warranty is no longer, so next time I will be upgrading and literally steering away from OEM.

 

[motley1987]

How did you know your steering rack was bad? I'm not sure what the symptoms are related to it going bad but since you've been through three, I'm guessing you know exactly what a bad one feels like.

 

[alrock]

The OEM bushing is an easy replacement, which is a good thing as I went through 4 of them before I upgraded to the PCF bracket.

My only replacement rack was due to worn inner tie rods and there was a lot of play where the tie rods meets the rack

 

[08H3]

Personally, I would not put in another OEM bushing. Invest in one of the aftermarket kits and the issue will be fixed, not just delayed. As far as racks go, I didn't replace mine when I upgraded the mount. It's at 130,000 now and I've never had any issues.

 

[Bigunit]

Personally, I would not put in another OEM bushing. Invest in one of the aftermarket kits and the issue will be fixed, not just delayed. As far as racks go, I didn't replace mine when I upgraded the mount. It's at 130,000 now and I've never had any issues.

Same here.

 

[motley1987]

So I'm guessing the rack has to come out to slide the bushing on? Thanks for the input!

 

[digglesworth]

Depends which kit. You have 3 choices. There are 2 kits that give you everything, drivers side bushings and passenger clamp. 1 kit is the passenger side only that doesn't require disconnecting the rack.