Corvette Consternation Part 1 Steering

Every one that reads this blog knows that older cars, no matter how careful you, or how much you baby your car you are going to have problems.  That’s the nature of any relationship.  Things break, undiscovered issues, or even your own missteps can issues.  You just can’t through in the towel “Honey, I’m going to have to find another mate, you just can’t run as far as you use too.” or “Sorry but that broken leg changes everthing…ur outta hereeee.”  (Lawyer up…my wife is fine, no injuries, still running fine..no worries…just wanted to be clear!!!!)

Well, over the past few weeks my Corvette has been a serving up a bunch of consternation.

If you remember a few posts back I had replaced one power steering hose and need help with the power steering reservoir.  That got done.  Shortly after that, a leak developed from the front end and over the course of two days it got a little worse.  So I pulled it in to the garage and crawled under neight..and that’s no small effort. 

The power steer of course provided hydraulic power to make the turning of the front wheels easier. (There you got the basics of the how it works.)  This entire process insists that the fluid, in this case power steering fluid stays in place.  Well my beauty failed conform to the standards. 

Rack Pinion

If you look at the image above you’ll see the plastic boots (A) that cover and protect the shaft.  Those are supposed to be dry.  When I touched the boot on the left side of the Vette fluid poured out, clearly it was no longer dry.   What was also very very clear at that exact moment was the pain in my wallet. 

Basically, the you have two options when something that is supposed to be dry is wet on a car, replace it or rebuild it.  I chose both.  Lucky for me the complete unit for my 84 Vette is still available through on-line Corvette parts houses.  EEERRRRKKKK..While I’m writing this I have the Speed channel up on up in the corner of my monitor, they are testing an Aston Martin DBS against a  Bentley w/ W12 engine…soft girl cars…of course that girl’s got some skills, putting eyeliner on at 150 miles per hour!!….end of EERRRKKK – I’ll let you know how that turns out.

A quick trip down the street to Tim Sisk proved my investigative results.   I’m the Average guy with Average skills, there was not something I wanted to attempt. Additionally, it requires a front end alignment.  So I order one, and because I hate having the car in the shop I had it expressed shipped, or at least that’s what I asked.  It didn’t shipped and took a total of four days.  What…you say…”oooohhh poor baby, took 4 days to get it here!”    Hey, that’s a life time for some car guys!!!!

Now ordering the rack and pinion requires a core charge (that’s where you have to return the old part or pay the core fee – they rebuild the old part and resell it) but as I stated I wanted to do both so I paid the core fee and kept the part.  This allows me to either learn to rebuild the part or sent it out to have it rebuild and store it way.  Plus I have the original part, although there isn’t much benefit in collector value for having the orignal rack and pinion (numbers matching) 84 Vette, well least not for another 20 years!!!!

The part was replaced and the car realigned, in total it was out of service for a solid 7 days. Picked the car up and drove it home and that was that…and if you believe that, I have some swamp land out here in AZ to sell ya!!!    Stay tune for what happened next

Oh…the Aston Martin and Bentley match up.  Here the details:

Braking 0-100 to 0 (time speeding getting up to 100 and then distance measured for stopping-shortest distance wind) ….15 second from 0 to 100 for both cars, breaking the Aston won at 40 feet shorter stopping distance.

60-130 test on roll – Bentley win 13.2 second, nearly a second faster than the Aston

The rolling mile  – top speed 165 mph for Bentley, 1 second faster than the Aston – 159 mph

Road course – 55.6 seconds for the Bentley      53.8 seconds for the Aston

Like I said – girls car..my 84 Vette has a top speed of nearly 200 miles an hour.  My personal best, 174 mile per hour in the Vette – yeah that’s just last year.  Dyno proven.

Thanks for reading.