I was driving my 92 hatch yesterday with my friend that is a mechanic, and he asked me what the clicking/clunking noise my car makes when I turn is. I told him I thought it was my axle, but it has always clunked since I got the car over a year ago. He told me it is not a normal noise, and when we got back to his shop, he jacked up the car, and found something very scary. My steering rack was being held on by one bolt that was only finger tight. All of the other bolts were missing. We put the correct bolts in, and the clicking and clunking is completely gone, and my car is way easier to steer now. My question is, I know the bolts are tight, but is there anything else I should be checking since this was broken for over a year? I want to make sure there is nothing else messed up under there, and prevent any future damage. Any input is great, Thanks

 

bump...

 

HOOLY ****** **** !!!

Ok, check to see if the tie rods haven't been warped due to the additional stress put on them.

If the rack was being held in my 1 bolt, it might not have been level. If it wasn't pefectly horizontal, the load could have forced the rack and pinion together causing the gears to grind.

This is what I'm talking about:



Meets



If it drives fine now then you're probably straight. But if you wanna take it apart and inspect it, go here for dissassembly instructions: https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1317231

 

well if you didnt check it by yourself for over a year are you sure youre up for checking anything else? the tie rods are fairly stout and i doubt you did much to them that you wouldnt notice just by turning the wheel. Is there alot of slop/play in the wheel? If not youre probably fine.

 

Like I said before, I was always thinking it was a noise because of my cut out frame...There really isn't any play in the wheel right now, everything seems to be ok, I just wanted to see if there was anything else I could have missed.

 

anyone else have some ideas??

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 92HatchB16 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">anyone else have some ideas??</TD></TR></TABLE>
Sure.

Also, check to see if the outer boots on either side are still intact and not leaking grease and make sure the clips are fastened correctly like so:

 

This same thing happened to me but i was going really fast and my rack just dropped and my steering wheel spun out of control. Luckily i got control of it and didn't ruin anything else. but yeah all i did was bolt it back up and it worked fine after that, that happened about 2 years ago, im having some front end problems right now but i don't know ifs it my rack or not, If you're wheels start going back and forth when your going fast i would say it was the steering rack but im not sure.

 

Ok, thanks everyone, I appreciate it. Learned my lesson about assuming I know what a certain noise is, for sure.