Steering rack bracket interferes with rack?

[erachner]

Hi all,

I'm very belatedly building an early-production 818S and I just ran into a fitment problem with the passenger-side steering rack bracket. The rack is from an '07 WRX (non-STI). I can't imagine nobody ran into this, but my searches of the forum haven't hit anything.

As one can see in the photo, the steering rack bracket interferes with the fitting stub on the rack.

darnit.jpg

The rack is bolted into place on the driver side, so this is the correct position for the rack - moving it to one side or the other isn't an option. Most likely I'm going to just trim the bracket down to make room for the protruding stub on the rack, but thought I would ask: has anybody else encountered this? Am I missing something obvious? What did you do instead?

Thanks,

Eric

[Bob_n_Cincy]

Hi Eric,
I have a very early chassis #21.
There was a problem with the steering rack not being in the center of the car then the steer wheel was at center of travel. Watch out for that. I extended the right end of the rack 20mm.
This picture s the final mounting of my rack. Bob

bobs rack.jpg

[erachner]

Hey Bob, thanks very much for calling my attention to that - I'll take a close look at things and see how they line up.

Which rack is that you're using? It looks different from my '07 WRX rack:
darnit2.jpg

Thanks again!

[Bob_n_Cincy]

Which rack is that you're using? It looks different from my '07 WRX rack:

I'm not sure where my steering rack came from. Could have been off of an 04 forester xt or a 06 NA Impreza wagon.
I do know it is 3 revolutions lock to lock.

[erachner]

When all's said and done, I assume the issue cropped up because there were too many variations in steering racks over the range of eligible donor vehicles for F5 to have tested every single one of them, and whatever specific rack came off my '07 WRX rack just wasn't tested.

Anyway, easy enough problem to solve. I cut the bracket down to clear the stub. Problem solved.

brackethack.jpg

rackmounted.jpg

[BigDanSubaru]

Another potential solution would be installing the Zero Decibel Motorsports steering rack holder kit. I installed it on mine and it does a better job of supporting the rack than Victoria's Secret. Not sure if it fits the older chassis though, so might want to check with him on that. But I used it on my newer FFR 818C chassis and an 07 WRX rack.