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Old 1st November 2015, 15:17
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Default Steering

I decided to fit the Honda steering column rather than the mini one so I could use the Honda loom and all the niceties of a later column, this gave a few problems at the rack end because the splines were different.



I gave it a thought and then stripped down a old mini rack I had and removed the pinion, I took it into work, made a heat sink and with the inner bearing race still attached I had my welder build up the end over the existing spline.







Then jumped onto the lathe and turned it down to a size I had experimented with earlier, before this I had done test pieces to get things right before I attempted the pinion





Then I set a medium straight cut knurling tool and put on a new spline



Once completed it was tried into the Honda steering knuckle and hey ho a finished pinion. The reason I left the inner race on was because the new spline was to be larger than original and wouldn’t slip over.





Well that went well so I stripped down a new mini steering rack hoping to fit the modified pinion but all was not well, the pinion was of a diffent pattern than the old one I had done the mod on so back to work to do it all over again with the new pinion



Once done at last the rack was rebuilt and fitted into the car.

Now for the column, as the car was made with a ply-wood shelf which supported the mini column I had to make up various brackets to allow the Honda column to fit, first I fitted the knuckle to the rack but on doing so it fouled the fibreglass around the hole so that was ground back down to allow full rotation



Then the column was fitted to the knuckle and a bracket was made to fix the top of the column to the ply shelf



As the column is adjustable I then made a support for the mid section of the column



Then the ply shelf was drilled and all bolted into place

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