I see for my car, on assembly, molybdenum disulfide lithium based grease is supposed to be applied to the teeth of the rack portion of the rack and pinion. Adding grease to the rack isn’t listed as a maintenance item. Is it a good idea to typically add additional grease to the teeth of the rack, as part of regular maintenance? Just thinking that after several years the lubrication properties of the grease has probably diminished since the date of manufacture. Kind of difficult to add grease to an inner tie rod, but it seems like the rack should be easy and i don’t see any negative in periodically adding grease?
Yes, remove your rack n pinion, completely disassemble it, hopefully you have the know how on building racks, grease it, reassemble it, reinstall the rack n pinion, hope you get it right, then drive it to have it aligned up and hopefully you did it correctly or the rack could lock up in a turn and cause a wreck…
Yoshi, you have already been told in another one of your threads/post that this is a bad idea and I have NEVER heard of anybody doing this… I have 35+ years including building transmissions, complete engine rebuilds and rear ends and about everything in between and I would NOT even do this on my own vehicle…
My bad couldn’t remember if I asked this or not. I was thinking of just loosening the clamp on the boot to expose the teeth and adding some grease, not completely disassemble lol. But I get the point it’s not really necessary I guess.
The rack n pinion is sealed off from the outside world, it is what keeps the grease and PS fluid inside the rack, the inner tie rod is attached to the outside part of the rack coming out of the rack… The boot protects the inner tie rod not the rack…
Kinda like a transaxle seal where the cv axle goes into the transmission vs the cv boot that retains the grease and protects the cv joint…
Fifty years ago “greasing the rack” was part of the normal “oil change and grease job (ball joints, axel shaft, water pump, generator, etc.)” maintenance and the parts all had Zerk fittings to allow you to do it but since then materials and design have greatly improved, making regular greasing of the rack generally unnecessary.
The exception is if the part is worn out, in which case greasing won’t help and it’s time to replace.
Well, I can tell you that during the '50s several of the Brit Cars were still using greasable water pumps and generators (not alternators) with a take off reduction gear cable drive to the tach
Without doing deep research I can’t produce an exact date when these parts were replaced but I’m guessing that it was somewhere around 1962 when the MG Midget was introduced and the generator MGA was replaced by the alternator MGB.
