I believe the PO of my car swapped in a high speed rack, but may have interchanged the inner tie rods?

It's a 92 and has a 2.0 turn rack. It had an aftermarket steering wheel that was universal keyed and the outer tie rods didnt have the same amount of threads showing on both sides.

When I put a stock '92 airbag wheel on (keyed) it was clocked 70deg out, which I thought was the thread difference, but adjusting the tie rods to recenter the steering wheel, it actually caused the threads to get even more unbalanced.

So I'm searching here about the "Z51" steering on the early models and the different inner tie rod lengths over the years and wonder if the PO could have F-up'd the rack in some way by putting the wrong inner rods in an early rack unit or what other Frankenstein surgery could have been done on it to give such an odd offset?

Thoughts?

Right now I have 1" of threads showing on the LHS and 1.5" on the right, and the steering wheel,is still 20deg counterclockwise. I have very little wheel travel on a left turn before hitting the stops, and its not even enough to activate the turn signal deactivation coming out of a left turn..

Thanks
Mike

 

Inner rods can be ID'd maybe from here. I've never had these tie rods in hand but I certainly would believe the dimensions to be correct. I wasn't aware of the change in '93 until I saw it mentioned here. I'd say that when the rack was rebuilt/assembled the relationship of the rack and the actual pinion maybe wasn't centered appropriately. I believe it's covered in the FSM. What is the code on the end cap? Maybe the actual origin of the rack could be tracked to that.

I'd be interested in what you find.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/1584727753-post1.html

You don't mention starting at center so what needs to happen first is you center the steering wheel in relationship to the rack on the front end pads with the tie rods removed from the steering arms. Then you attempt to install the outer tie rods on the inner ends to maintain that position. Start with outer tie rods removed from the inners. This approach should give you equal lock to lock with steering wheel centered. With the tie rods removed you should be able to confirm the center to left lock dimension and the center to right lock dimension also. I realize it's a start from scratch approach but it's fool-proof I'd think!