So I got the bolts and what not to depower my steering rack. I did this a bit of time ago and just today got around to moving the car about. Well, I get in and start moving only to discover that for some reason I have NO steering now what so ever. I am assuming I have done something similar to a monkey ******* a football. Please help, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

The top part of the rack where the steering column connects probably came undone.

 

does the steering wheel turn easy or hard? Your problem is the air cant travel inside now, if you capped all the areas off. Youll need to remove the internal seal

 

Compare what you did to the tutorial at FM.

The first image shows the "looping the tubes" method. Hit next to see the hard way to do it with step by step disassembly and reassembly.

Flyin' Miata : Tech: 1.8 conversion

 

Wheel doesn't turn at all. I saved all the tubes so I may just bend them and re=attach.

As always, gents, thanks for the help.

 

Key lock?

 

I'm thinking either olderguy or slutz4 got it.

 

If you didnt remove teh seal then either way you should.

You can crack open a plug to test if its confined internal pressure

 

heh, that would be funny.

 

the plugs are only there to keep dust out, not to maintain any kind of pressure, so take them all out and see if you can steer again. One of the plugs may be too long, and acting as a set screw against one of the moving components.

 

Pretty sure that's the problem, not the keylock since i didn't **** with any of that ****. I'm going to take the rack off next week and chop the seal off.

report incoming.

 

By seal I hope you mean the Teflon ring that surrounds the piston near the center of the steering rack cylinder. There's another seal between the pinion rack and the rack cylinder, and ideally that should come out too, but that second seal isn't going to solve your problem.

Some folks take just the Teflon piston seal out, but it's probably better to take the piston out as well since the piston is a pretty tight fit in the cylinder and there might be some rack shaft restriction with quick steering inputs (and a bit of residual steering fluid in the cylinder) with the rack piston in place.

 

Whatever the directions from FM shows is what I'll be doing. Although I may just re-attach the hardlines and do a loopback on them because I'm pretty lazy.

 

I had that issue when I depowered the rack on my car. I looped the lines though. It turned out that there was still too much fluid in the system. So, I unhooked one of the lines and turned the wheel lock to lock a few times to squeeze fluid out. The steering got easier and then I capped it off. You still want a little fluid in there to lubricate if you end up not doing the FM method. To me the FM method is overkill. I don't think all that labor is worth the time. You could probably pick up a used manual rack and new tie rod ends and be done with it.

 

The result probably won't be as good, but it might be good enough. You might also consider having someone weld your pinion shaft to eliminate the play from the torsion bar valve, but that requires even more effort and pretty much the complete disassembly of your rack. Most folks don't do that because it's a PITA and has to be done carefully and correctly (it's a critical component of your steering, and if it breaks when you're in a hard corner you're probably fucked). But if steering feedback is the goal of de-powering the rack, why would you leave any avoidable slop in the system?

 

What size bolts (or where do I find the caps) should I use to plug up the holes where the high pressure lines went? I'm in the process of yankin my PS crap.

 

If you want to go the quick and cheap route, just cut the hoses short at the fitting and pinch them closed. IIRC this is what the FM instructions suggest. It worked well for me. Just round off the edges of the pinched hose ends because they are sharp little bastards otherwise.

This only works BTW for the 'FM Style' depower where the seal is removed.

 

I welded the bottom holes in the banjo bolts, and cut off the fittings on the smaller holes and welded them shut as well.

 

I removed all the hoses and want to retain the possibility of re-adding PS in case of possible future sale of the car. I'm just going to put some vacuum caps on them.

 

You are going to love it by the way. I am never going back.
If the steering effort is too heavy, get an alignment and have them reduce the caster to something like 3.5-4 degs. Works great.