Rebuilt steering rack from a national vendor leaks after 1 week of being in the car. Bought from Rock Auto.

Problem is the day it started leaking like a pig, I had just brought it in from an alignment at NTB the evening before.

NTB did the alignment Thursday nite, Friday AM hop in to drive to work no power steering. Fluid way low. Add fluid, start car leaking like a stuck pig....drive truck to work.

Jacked up car today. Noticed drivers outer tie rod lock nut is 1/4" away from tie rod....now I'm getting warm. At this point Im thinking its the pressure hose O ring leaking at the rack. Slide rack out with hoses connected fire it up after I added more fluid.....bleeding fluid from the input shaft.

So what are the odds the guy doing the alignment freaking horsed on the input shaft and disturbed the seal. He is already a suspicious character from not locking that drivers outer tie rod end down.



So would it be just easier in the long run to inspect the input seals / orings and change them out if need be or deal with the hassle of returning this part to the vendor/Rock Auto?

Forgot another thing to mention I have already taken out the factory rubber bushings and installed urethane bushings for bolting the rack to the frame so leaning closer toward me just trying to fix this myself.....then keep my eye on people whacking on this rack again....

Already have emails off the Rock Auto and will call vendor on Monday AM

I guess anything is possible on the input seal but I wouldn't think alignment would/curt hurt it. I'd return/exchange it.

Grab a seal, throw it in there, and get on with life.

I hear you on just moving on and forgetting about it.

From some of the online research I have been doing on the racks there are several sets of o rings in the pinion section. This should be holding the pressure from the first seal at the input shaft...the way it is bleeding like a stuck pig makes me wonder how much of the pressure these orings are holding back. Full assist pressure should not be present at the main input shaft seal.

The tech at NTB was removing the collapsible column adapter from the steering column to the rack and it was probably not the correct way to be doing it...there is a strap that can flip to one side if the bolt is completely removed and he was sliding the adapter up and trying to get it over the nose of the input shaft.

I wouldn't think that trying to get the column adapter over the input shaft to hoarse it over enough to trash the seal but yeah I had a real good view of it bleeding all that fluid.

Ill call the remaufacturer Monday AM and get their view on it.

That outer seal is there to keep junk out, not pressure in. You have more issues as you suspect.

Glad I didn't return the old rack.

Had a good look at the rebuilt and original racks.

The original rack had a seal, retaining washer and snap ring at the input shaft.

The rebuilt was missing the retaining washer and the seal was pushing up since the snap ring wasn't in contact with the seal.

Put it all together first pressure tested it fine, then installed in the car.

The passenger side lock nut wasn't torqued to lock that tie rod adjustment either. Back to NTB this week and Ill be checking it before its off the rack.

How this rack made it out of the rebuild shop with no retaining washer on the input seal baffles me. It did last about a week before it started to let fluid leak out.