Well after all the advice not to buy it my sisters grand voyager has finally thrown up a problem. the power steering is slowly leaking, i haven't seen it yet but she's had it into a garage and they've said it needs a new steering rack. does anybody know if it's possible to get replacement seals for a voyager rack? has anyone had to work on a voyager rack is there anything out of the ordinary on them?
cheers
chris
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just to finish this thread off for any future reference.
did the job yesterday morning very straight forward to do, managed to source a reconditioned rack from ebay for £130 with old one in exchange, i would recommend using new track rods ends as the old ones tend to seize themselves on.
1, basically jack the car up, remove road wheels, loosen track rod end retaining nuts, 19mm. remove track rod end from hub, mine came out by tapping the hub gently then a sharp hit on the end of the track rod end thread (the thread doesn't run to the end so no need to worry about damaging it.), you could easily use a balljoint splitter if required though.
2, inside the drivers side of the car under the dash remove the 2 trim panels to reveal the steering column. in the middle of the column is a joint with a pinch bolt in, remove the small fail safe locating clip from the end of the pinch bolt, then undo the 13mm nut (the nut is fixed to the column, it turns but doesn't actually come away you take the bolt out) then separate the two parts of the column.
3, then under the car to remove what i assume must be a protection plate of some sort,(can't miss it as you can easily see it stops the rack coming down) undo a series of 21mm bolts, they have nuts on top that need to be held i did it using to sockets, there's about 10 of them, and on 19mm bolt near the centre of the plate. remove the plate from under the car
4, you know have access to the steering rack, i loosened the two 21mm bolts (again nuts on the top) holding the rack in so i had some movement in it to give me better access to the power steering pipes where they join the rack just to the right of where the steering column enters the rack. using an 18mm spanner remove the power steering hoses where they enter the rack, have a bucket handy. to aid with this bit i removed the 15mm nut for the bracket holding one of the power steering pipes to the subframe and the 13mm bolt for the other pipe this gives a bit more movement to get the spanner on the unions.
5, with the power steering pipes removed manoeuvre the rack out from under the car, this can be tricky as there i about 10 inches of steering column to come out of the car with the rack but it's obvious how to do it, a small metal plate will come out too which has plastic brackets for the power steering lines on, i didn't refit this piece as on my new rack the pipes were run differently.
6, with the rack of the car knock out the roll pin that holds the steering column to the rack, note which way it's fitted to the shaft on the rack, refit the column to the new rack and refit the roll pin.
7, refit is literally the reverse of removal, once the rack is all in and bolted up before you drop the car back on the floor refill the power steering fluid, leave the lid off the reservoir, start the car and working the steering from lock to lock 10 times, then recheck the fluid level and top up if necessary and work the steering through another 10 times and recheck the level then replace the lid and put the car back on the ground.
the chrysler manual lists the use of mopar 9206 power steering fluid (1.2 litres for the whole system) which from speaking to the power steering specialist who supplied the rack isn't very good and is difficult to source so he recommended using halfords standard power steering fluid which is about £6 a litre.
chris
Edited by thomp1983 on 16/03/2009 at 13:18
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