steerign rack teeth

[x-bird]

Picked up one of the BMI Yerf steering racks in the fall and need to get it centered for it to work for my set-up. so i carefully measured, marked made starter grooves, ground and filed for the past 3 hours. got it looking really nice and similar to the originals and yet i cannot get the pinion gear to advance onto the new teeth at all.

Does the pinion gear and shaft need to come out and have anything removed from it?? It's stopping solid like there's pin in the shaft going against a stop. I marked the pinion shaft and it is stopping in the exact same location as before adding the extra teeth (1 full rotation plus a little bit more). Not even a touch more rotation then a binding feel, instead it's a "clunk."
Really don't want to have to wreck the seal for nothing or beat this thing to death trying to get the bearing out if there's no need. filled the teeth with grease and other than a surface wipe from the housing ends, there's no push in from the next tooth on the pinion.

[metalstudman1]

2 questions- you did the filing on the long side of the rack? you did add the big flat spot at the end of the new teeth? I don't think these units are servicable without special equipment( a puller?), I believe the steering knuckle is pressed into the pinion gear. My racks ended up with 4-3/8" travel -lock to lock.

[x-bird]

Thanks, was gonna wipe this out, didn't think there were any night owls out tonight.

Decided not to toss in the towel and cored it out. Yay work in 3.5 hours ... lol ... Found the issue, very first tooth tip was just overly wide enough to snag the gear. the gear tooth mark was right on the corner finally got the right light angle on it and saw the line in the file marks. ran it through and cleaned up all the snags. ended up cutting a bit too deep on some trying to fix the problem spots and it gets a notchy feel towards the end from the gear dropping in.

Worked the long side only--only spot i have for this is dead center. with it out front i had to make a spacer mount for the boots that puts it about 3.5 or so from the center of the kingpin. It sets on the opposite side from the spiderbox setup. I put 10 more teeth into it so that it travels to the same spot on each side of the rack and I won't have to go back and cut more if it doesn't give me enough. About 7 inches total travel, 1 -3/4 turns lock to lock. Once I bolt it in and locate the tie rod mounts, i'll check where it needs to end then put a quick weld across the top of the next gap for a stop so there's no chance of overturning the tire/spindle and wiping out an arm.

Started with the flattening out the rack with a hand held HD belt sander--took it to a tape layer from final then finished it off with a file. worked pretty nicely. that part took all of 5 minutes. lol ... marked the center of the gaps , squared them then put a little guide slot in with the dremel before hitting them with the angle grinder then my pile of files.