A Ride Out And A Rack.

 

 I ended my last update with the intention to sort the steering rack out and I quote “…should be straightforward”…. I should just keep my big mouth shut. On first inspection one of the inner tie rods was a tad squiffy. It could be straightened out a little easy enough and would save roughly £30-£40 on a replacement component however the inspection was going to get worse before it got better. With the main body of the rack in the bench vice I clamped on a set of grips to the splined shaft and “tried” to put the rack through a full sweep left to right….. my rack has/must have had a knock at some point because it had a terrible tight spot on one end, and on further inspection when the boots were removed you can just see a slight bend on the main rack when the straight edge was put up against it. So a bent tie rod end and a bent main rack puts it in the bin basically as it is just not worth stripping it any further. Off to the depths of eBay then on the search for a replacement. Not as common a part used as you would have expected really, new units are available for around £230 but I’m really trying to tighten the budget on this build a little now, and make savings where possible without compromising quality or details. 

I eventually found a good used rack for £50 and promptly put the order through and awaited delivery. I also ordered the basic rebuild parts for a steering rack from another supplier consisting of the rubber boots, outer tie rods and mounting rubber bushes with clamps. The latter part of this all turned up in a timely fashion, yet despite the rack itself getting dispatched the couriers decided to loose it during its trip to me and subsequently left me claiming for my money back. So further search for another replacement rack got me in contact with a company called Spitbitz and after a quick phone call and conversation I had another replacement rack in the post two weeks after my initial purchase…. And it was £20 cheaper, bonus.

So first job get it clamped down in the vice and check for any issues turning from lock to lock… all was good. Second was to check the inner tie rods for bends or stripped threads… again they were both good. So a refurb of this rack can now continue… this “should” be straightforward. Out came the wire wheel and attention was spent on the many years of grime and crud sticking to the main body. This cleaned up nicely so I moved on to removing the rubber boots and cleaning off all the old grease and any grit (next to none) from the main rack itself. I didn’t go as far as removing the circlip and checking the shims for the main splined spindle, the rack was nice and tight in its movement with next to no slop in lock to lock, so just a clean and re grease after the cosmetics were taken care off.

I masked off the parts that need to stay paint free and after a good degrease and wipe down I gave the body a good heaven primer coat follow a day later with 2/3 coats of just a generic black topcoat. Once left overnight to fully cure I could start the rebuild with new grease and boots etc… 

Another job to do is to calculate and mark the centre of the rack sweep and mark the splined shaft accordingly. This is so that when the rack is installed in the car you know that you have the same number of turns from straight line to full left or full right lock. If not done correctly you could find for example you have two full left turns of the steering wheel to left lock agains one full right turn for right lock…. That would be unbalanced and potentially dangerous. 

You can calculate the center points a few different ways but because I still haven’t fitted my rubber boots it was easy just to measure the full extent of the protruding rack on the near side and divide the measurements by two.

You can see pictured here the total extension measurement at 171mm, so reducing this dimension to 85.5mm will give me the central point to which I will get full travel from left to right. You can’t really check this measurement on the other side of the rack as the inner tie rod bottoms out inside the larger diameter of the larger casting for the bigger rubber boot. So the way to check your measurements are correct is to then fully extend the rack one direction and make a mark on the splined spigot that aligns with a mark on the main body. Then with the clamps on the splines rotate the rack to the opposite side, counting the rotations you have made against the splines and main body casting. 

The spitfire rack is roughly just over 3 rotations from full lock to full lock. So now when bottomed out on the other lock, make another mark aligned to the marked splined shaft but on the main casting again. You can see pictured the marks made, one at around 6 o’clock and one at about 10 o’clock. Now to confirm the centre you should rotate from a full lock 1.5 rotations then watching the mark on the spline continue it past the closest casting mark to halfway between the two previous casting marks…. This is your center point, make a third mark on the body casting and you can be confident that your track rod ends will be equal when setting the front tow correctly. 

So to put practice into maths and confirm it’s correct I mentioned a full lock measurement was 171mm. So with the splined spigot mark lined up with our central mark on the rack casting we “should” have a measurement from the same points of reference at 85.5mm

And as you can see here…. Bang on 85.5 

I don’t really think the .5mm will make any difference whatsoever in the grand scale of things, but it’s nice to be accurate when it’s comes to tolerances. 

So now I can fit the rubber mounts and fixing brackets which have already had a clean up and treat to the same paint finish, along with the track rod ends and make it all look pretty and ready for fixing to the chassis.

Another little (often overlooked) job was to clean up and sort out the earth wire that is fitted to the main casting and earthed to the chassis. Without this it’s unlikely your center horn push will operate correctly as the rack is technically isolated from the negative earthed chassis from its rubber mounts. I will have to scrap away some of the chassis texture paint under the bracket where this will be fitted and that should see my horn operating correctly when I get to that. 

During the past few weeks I have also spent a little time down in the midlands visiting family. So when i was in the vicinity I cheekily asked Paul (a fellow Spyder owner) if I could come and have a look at his car. Luckily he said yes and so on a Sat morning I actually managed to get a proper look, touch and feel at a finished car. Wow is all I can say, I was so genuinely overwhelmed and excited to see a finished car and it just looked so right and sounded tremendous. 

I spent an extremely enjoyable few hours with Paul and he let me have a real good climb all over his car, which has helped me massively with my build and how I can progress things. So many little niggles that I have been thinking about that have been clarified just by looking at his. I was even allowed to sit in and get a feel for the driving position and pedal box. I was more than surprised how I could fit as I’m just over 6ft myself and I could achieve full clutch pedal without any issues of thighs rubbing the steering wheel… so that is really encouraging for a comfortable driving position. After much more banter and talking cars Paul offered me a quick ride out round the local area…. And it would have been rude to say no. 

Even though it was only just a quick blat around the backroads, it was more than enough to convince me that this was going to be awesome fun to kick about in. No way near a speed daemon, but fun from start to finish. Paul’s car sounded lovely and whilst we didn’t really hit anything higher than 40mph it was great to have the wind rushing in your face and the exposure of the elements around you. Granted you will be getting friendlier with your passengers as you sit very close together, but not much difference from the original spitfire really I suppose…. These are little cars, not monster SUV’s