ix quick ratio steering rack now available!

[E30andy]

https://bavallrad.com/2020/01/28/finally-a-quick-ratio-steering-rack-for-the-greatest-e30-of-all/

[D.Martijn]

Very nice!
Is there world wide shipping ?

[E30andy]

Very nice!
Is there world wide shipping ?

Not sure about shipping but if you email Kent Zimmerman <kent@bavallrad.com> he will let you know. Got back to me real quick when I emailed him a question.

[madman23]

This is awesome. Definitely some great work!!! Am I right to assume the rack is rebuilt?

[Kershaw]

That is awesome, but $1825 + shipping is a hard pill to swallow.

Edit:
So, it looks like they took an 2006-2010 E83 steering rack (non servotronic) and they rotated the input shaft housing 180*, which is pretty clever. The holes probably needed to be drilled and tapped for banjo fittings. They then made custom lines for it and clearanced aluminum where appropriate. What inner tie rods are used isnt shown. Of course, a lot of inner tie rods could cut down and retapped with no issue. I don't recognize those outer tie rods off hand, regular e30? I'm guessing it is. So the RWD inner (cut down) and outer tie rods are used. Good job and all and it certainly is a bit of labor, I'm not knocking them on that. But 2k is rough.

[kid325e]

Pretty cool that this is available!

Price is high but expected as there is nothing to compare it to currently. Now if we could figure out a good option for HD or reman front axles...

[Eskie]

The outers look like e36 to me, could be wrong Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[D.Martijn]

That is awesome, but $1825 + shipping is a hard pill to swallow.

Edit:
So, it looks like they took an 2006-2010 E83 steering rack (non servotronic) and they rotated the input shaft housing 180*, which is pretty clever. The holes probably needed to be drilled and tapped for banjo fittings. They then made custom lines for it and clearanced aluminum where appropriate. What inner tie rods are used isnt shown. Of course, a lot of inner tie rods could cut down and retapped with no issue. I don't recognize those outer tie rods off hand, regular e30? I'm guessing it is. So the RWD inner (cut down) and outer tie rods are used. Good job and all and it certainly is a bit of labor, I'm not knocking them on that. But 2k is rough.

You are correct, it's an E83 steering rack with the housing rotated + tapped for banjo bolts. The original holes are filled and redrilled for the new rack to bolt on to the subframe.
I mean, I might have a try at this myself. I work in a machine shop with access to 5 axis mills, CMM, wire and sinker EDM, lathe.. + we have a hydraulic shop next doors..

However, would the new rack have the same travel? should it need some stops to limit travel.. might have to compare with the original one.
I'm not sure about the tie rods either

[Eskie]

To me the tie rods look e36. Maybe 32111139313.

[Kershaw]

Yeah that looks right.

Limit stops are a lot easier to make than a lower ratio rack. But I bet it's fine.

[madman23]

This is the huge issue right here. High price when someone build something cool for the IX community, yet so expensive E30 guys don't want to buy it.

[E30andy]

This is the huge issue right here. High price when someone build something cool for the IX community, yet so expensive E30 guys don't want to buy it.

I look at it like this.....most of us dont have a monthly car payment since we are driving old cars that are relatively cheap (when compared to a new car). Therefore, in that context, putting out $1k dollars for something that improves performance and probably resale value, spread out over the life of the car becomes pretty cheap.

[AWDBOB]

I look at it like this.....most of us dont have a monthly car payment since we are driving old cars that are relatively cheap (when compared to a new car). Therefore, in that context, putting out $1k dollars for something that improves performance and probably resale value, spread out over the life of the car becomes pretty cheap.

I would agree, with your logic, and if it were a grand it’d be a totally different story, but it’s double that with shipping.

Most of us paid less than the rack swap for our cars haha.

[D.Martijn]

Little update for you guys,

As some of you might have seen on my build thread, I got myself a spare original iX rack, front iX subframe and of course the X3 steering rack.
I've gone ahead and cleaned everything, took some measurements and quickly put them into solidworks. To finally put them onto each other to check the differences.



It is indeed possilble to rotate the upper housing to get the hydraulic lines facing the right way


Now for the measurements, this is what I got. Do note, I used some square/rectangular box tubing to reference off so take +/-1mm into account...
Blue sketch lines are the X3 steering rack, grey is the original iX rack

1)The X3 rack has 10mm more travel. To get the same kind of travel as the iX a simple spacer will be needed as far as I understand so the tie rod stop agains this spacer instead of the rack itself.
2) Since the rack is +/-29mm longer on each side, there is a need for shorther tie rods like mentioned above
3) Original bolt holes will be needed to weld shut and re drilled to account for the differences
4) This might be the hardest part to figure out, the machined faces where the X3 steering rack sits onto the subframe are 6.5mm deeper from the centerline than the iX rack. It's possible to solve this by removing 6.5mm from the X3 rack but since the overall diameter of the rack is already quite a bit bigger, there is even more risk to run into clearancing problems.



I would like to put both racks and the subframe onto our CMM. I do know we are planning of purchasing a 3D laser/scanner system at work, which would make this even better to figure out. But I have currenlty no idea on when this would get purchased.

[erwendell]

Doesn't the rack then need to be shortened by 29mm on each side? I thought that in order to maintain the designed bump steer and Ackerman characteristics the tie rod inner to outer ball joint center lengths need to be the same as before. Using shorter tie rods to compensate for a longer rack changes both pivot to pivot length and the angle.