Half-way through a project update...
After having driven a few cars with much quicker steering racks I knew I wanted to replace mine. The only challenge was that mine was going to remain un-assisted so I was advised to avoid the Z3 rack. Ended up settling on a yellow tag E46 rack.
Finally had a chance to get working on it. First thing I noticed was how much crap was collecting in the fenders. If you've ever seen an E30 with rusted out lower front fenders, this is the culprit. Free weight reduction too!!
You have to keep clearing things out until you can see daylight in the bottom of the fender where the normal drain is
With that distraction out of the way, the steering rack job is fairly straight forward. Some silly delays because I haven't done the swap in several years, but relatively quickly and easily the old rack is out and the new one is (sort-of) ready to go in.
"Sort-of" being the key word, because I had previously bought the swap kit from garagistic with the spacers, but I didnt buy the steering coupler. I was again advised to also replace that.
Luckily I begged and pleaded and Sh3rpak!ng will help to wrap up the knuckle mods because Im out of town this weekend... I also need to get the car back together soon. This is as far as I'm at before I hand off the knuckle.
Finally, all this is pointless to just drive this around in LA city streets, so I had hinted to wifey that I want to hit a few track days this year. I finally just signed up for a track day with NASA at Buttonwillow in April, but I've also got my eye on a day at Sonoma raceway in July, which will be another HUGE bucket list for me. Its another epic California race track that I will get a chance to run after having gotten a chance to run on Laguna Seca most recently (2024!...) .
Goal for track days is to try and get to 4 in a year, so this is 2 tentatively circled on the calendar and I just need to find a way to sneak at least one more in... 2 more would be magical.
After having driven a few cars with much quicker steering racks I knew I wanted to replace mine. The only challenge was that mine was going to remain un-assisted so I was advised to avoid the Z3 rack. Ended up settling on a yellow tag E46 rack.
Finally had a chance to get working on it. First thing I noticed was how much crap was collecting in the fenders. If you've ever seen an E30 with rusted out lower front fenders, this is the culprit. Free weight reduction too!!
You have to keep clearing things out until you can see daylight in the bottom of the fender where the normal drain is
With that distraction out of the way, the steering rack job is fairly straight forward. Some silly delays because I haven't done the swap in several years, but relatively quickly and easily the old rack is out and the new one is (sort-of) ready to go in.
"Sort-of" being the key word, because I had previously bought the swap kit from garagistic with the spacers, but I didnt buy the steering coupler. I was again advised to also replace that.
Luckily I begged and pleaded and Sh3rpak!ng will help to wrap up the knuckle mods because Im out of town this weekend... I also need to get the car back together soon. This is as far as I'm at before I hand off the knuckle.
Finally, all this is pointless to just drive this around in LA city streets, so I had hinted to wifey that I want to hit a few track days this year. I finally just signed up for a track day with NASA at Buttonwillow in April, but I've also got my eye on a day at Sonoma raceway in July, which will be another HUGE bucket list for me. Its another epic California race track that I will get a chance to run after having gotten a chance to run on Laguna Seca most recently (2024!...) .
Goal for track days is to try and get to 4 in a year, so this is 2 tentatively circled on the calendar and I just need to find a way to sneak at least one more in... 2 more would be magical.
) and promptly jumped back on the road and drove the ~30 miles back to work sitting in mid-day LA traffic. Was really enjoying myself, love the car...
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