Slice of car modification life:
- C3 Corvettes have an awful 1950's derived GM manual steering gearbox with a shitty external power assist cylinder. This broadly means that the car will occasionally consider going in the direction you point the steering wheel. This is sketchy at stock 1981 power (190HP!) and positively alarming at the 400HP my friend's makes.
- Company makes a well-respected bolt-on kit that crams a C4 Corvette rack and pinion in. "Installs with basic hand tools in approximately 6 hours." The official install video shows it all going down in about 10 minutes, but that's on a naked chassis with no engine or bodywork. Sounds plausible!
Install team day 1:
Remove factory steering...
3 hours to pop one tie rod ball joint.
15 minutes to pop the other one and unbolt everything else.
Except the steering box won't drop out the bottom like it's supposed to because some idiot mounted a giant set of side pipe headers, and it won't come out the top because the whole rest of the steering system is attached to the pitman arm.
The power steering control dingleberry attaches to the end of the pitman arm with a ball joint, but you aren't really intended to remove it in-car because you're highly likely to damage it if you try getting it off with a pickle fork. Fuck it, try anyway.
30 minutes later, nope, better go get a pitman arm puller and the giant socket.
Go to the store, buy a 3/4 drive ratchet, socket, and the bigger of the two pitman arm pullers on the shelf.
Wind off the pitman arm nut.
Install the puller.
Shatter the puller.
Go back to the store and return the puller. Buy the smaller one.
The smaller one doesn't fit.
Reassess situation.
Bend some things for better access - it's all going in the trash anyway.
Get it off with the pickle fork.
Steering box doesn't fit out the TOP with the pitman arm attached because some idiot mounted a giant Wilwood master cylinder.
Remove alternator.
Bolt on conversion brackets. Discover inadequate fastener supply. Stores are closed. Deal with it later.
10 hours total time.
Weekday evenings solo:
Mock install steering rack and column connection. Discover clearance problems with sidepipe headers. Guess it's time to bash them up (they were formerly bashed in to clear the 1950s steering box so whatever)
Unbolt headers.
Discover guys who installed headers last welded the sidepipe to the header, making a single giant 8foot long exhaust that is nigh impossible to get out.
Remove clutch linkage because it's in the way of removing the headers.
Get it out eventually.
Grind off welds.
Uninstall, hit with a hammer and reinstall header 38347347378723478 times until it clears.
Total time about 16 hours spread over 2 weeks
Install team day 2:
Finish installing, torque and loctite conversion bracket bolts.
Install rack, minding U-joint phasing and steering/wheel center.
Have a disagreement about whether the U-joints are properly phased. I say it's 2 teeth out. He says it's dead on.
Feel steering. It's got hard spots from binding.
Use all available adjustment. Binding doesn't go away.
Reinstall rack, minding phasing again.
Have another disagreement about U-joint phasing. I say it's 1 tooth out. He says it's dead on.
Use all available adjustment. Binding doesn't go away.
Reinstall rack, minding phasing again. This time, it's definitely dead on.
Use all available adjustment. Binding doesn't go away.
Loosen steering column in cabin, slide it all the way back to the extreme of its adjustment.
Steering feel is WAY worse now, even though the U-joints look like they're almost ideally configured now.
Mess with adjustment. Binding goes away entirely. There are still some very light hard spots, but they aren't in time with the U-joints, so it must just be tough spots in the new rack. In fact, steering back and forth over them makes them decrease in severity. Must just be wearing in the rack. GM Kwalitee!
Read instructions. Next step "clean power steering pump IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS YOU WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY"
Check the 21-page receipt from the professional engine swap to see if they did anything with the pump.
No. The original 1981 power steering pump is still in there and utterly unmolested. Damnit.
Best pull it out.
A reman pump is all of $35 so may as well just change it instead of fooling around trying to clean the insides of a pump without dismantling it.
Power steering pump doesn't fit out the bottom. Alternator belt needs to come off to get it out the top.
Undo alternator adjustment to slip the belt off.
Discover alternator cannot be adjusted to be loose to get belt off pulley enough because hi-rise valve covers. Gotta remove alternator.
Discover alternator is mixed SAE and metric threads ON THE SAME PART. Jesus Christ GM.
Finally get power steering pump out.
Put header back in to check to make sure the properly-aligned steering column clears the headers.
NOPE.
6 hours total time.
That's as far as we've gotten so far. He's going to beat on the pipes some more and we'll resume in 2 weeks time. 32 hours into the 6 hour nominal time.
TODO that we know of is:
- Bash the headers some more. Probably another 10 hours of that.
- Install power steering pump and hydraulic hoses
- Reinstall alternator
- Loctite and torque a whole bunch of shit
- Do ghetto tape measure toe alignment.
- Pull coil springs (PITA)
- Adjust for bump steer
- Reinstall coil spring
- Reinstall clutch linkage
- Start car, bleed P/S system
- Outsource final alignment
So probably gonna be at least 50 hours by my estimation, probably 4 full-scale work days.