unisteer Rack an pinion

[RICH MUISE]

rlibew...any decisions yet on which way you're going?

[rlibew]

Yes, I will go with the borgeson  power steering, many have used this system with good results, the Rack an Pinion system definitely has the wow factor though. The unisteer kit is a different rack and mounting system than, Wurth it or ST fabrication and even after Mike modified it, it will hang to low and  interfere with the steering lineage.  Hind sight is 20/20 and we would have not used unisteer in the first place our tried to make it work and just sent it back. Unisteer has not been very helpful

I have seen the borgeson system on a 54 ford and it its clean, positive 

[rlibew]

My 57 is back on schedule, engine is in, radiator, cooling fans all in without  fire wall, trans tunnel or radiator support mods. The rack an pinion steering is now back in the project and functioning after complete restructuring of unsteer mounting system. I'm very happy  RP could be made to work it was a long road with wrong supplier in my opinion.  My car is now in paint, and after all mechanicals are done, will go back for any touch ups and final color sanding and buffing.  I'm still having problems posting pictures, will work on it again    soon.

[RICH MUISE]

great to hear. Let me know if you need help posting pics. send me a pm if you do.
Rich

[Schraders]

Thought you guys might like to see what we did to make the Unisteer work, keep the pics for future reference! After the motor was back in the car, I started looking at the available space and it looked pretty tight for the Borgeson box. I knew how much rlibew wanted the rack as well, so we took one last stab at it.

The main issue is that Unisteer uses their own tie rods ends and attaches them to the rack using a .750 thick billet steel block. The block spaces the tie rods off the rack by about 3" which makes packaging impossible. No matter how the rack is oriented the block hits something, the oil pan or the crossmember. This is what makes the rack hang so low. Additionally, when the rack is installed as directed, the input faces the front of the car by several degrees. When the rack is rotated so the input faces the right way the tie rod on the drivers side hits the input. This was made worse in our case by the dropped spindles in this particular vehicle.

We wanted to keep the Unisteer tie rods since they are very well made and an excellent problem solver design, actually all the parts they made are very high quality and everything is serialized. It's just that the overall design just doesn't work. So what we did was to machine the tie rod block down to about three fifths of it's original height and then make an adapter similar to what every other rack manufacturer is doing.

Our adapter is made from .250 and .500 cold rolled steel plate. We countersunk the holes where our adapter attaches to the rack to eliminate slop in the long term, and made it an an overall angle which allows the input to be oriented correctly and puts the tie rod pivot point exactly in line with the lower control arm pivot. This allows for better than factory geometry and zero possibility of bump steer. It also allows the rack to be mounted .750 higher than the scrub line. With this configuration we can cycle the front suspension without any interference anywhere and rlibew can run the car as low as he wants without any steering geometry issues.

[RICH MUISE]

Thanks for posting, esp. with the pics. Great job of problem solving...and my hat's off to you for sticking with it and taking care of your customer!
Rich

[gasman826]

With all the angles, it is really hard to compare but your modified version is much closer than where you started.  I went a whole different route with the inner rod ends.  I like the counter sink feature.  Mine are not counter sunk and I watch those bolts like a hawk.  I have drawn prints to machine version 2.0 from thicker tool steel and tapered countersink with cones or tapered bolts.  I have 10K miles on this setup with no issues.