What are symptoms of a bad rack and pinion?

Answer 1

AnswerStiff steering in the morning

Steering wheel binding on turns

Slop or looseness in steering

Be careful before condemning the rack as stiff steering can be caused by something else. Bottom ball joints often give trouble as nowadays everything seems to be "Sealed For Life". The old Rover 800 and Honda Legend/Accura often suffer in this way as allegedly a bad batch of ball joints got into the marketplace.

To make a good ball joint, the steel, the rubber and the grease all have to be spot-on. If any one of those components is substandard, failure is assured.

If one has a car where the Power Steering has to be used to get the steering wheel back to the centre its time to worry as the wheel should spin back to the centre by itself. Once a week it is a good idea to find a quiet car park to see if the wheel does in fact spin back by itself.

One ball joint that I replaced failed catastrophically after 30,000 miles (fortunately it was at low speed whilst parking) Unfortunately the guarantee on the component turned out to be only 12 months or 12,000 miles. What use is a guarantee like that? The brand of joint cryptic clue was "5 tins of hassle".

As to steering racks I do know someone whose rack seized-up and I suspect that it was bent. There had been a lot of potholes after a bad winter and his car had suffered from two bent road wheels and two bent track-rod-ends. Luckily his Polish mechanics were brilliant at doing the repairs. Four inch deep potholes are too much for a Ford Ka.