The other day, as if out of no where I noticed my steering wheel had play in it. I can now move it back and forth a bit before feeling any resistance. I thought it was the coupler between the steering shaft and the rack but it was tight as a drum. Any ideas? The car feels like an old jalopy now.

 

Take it up to 100mph (on the track) and it will be gone

 

I had 11 degree of play in mine. Had to replace the rack and re calibrate the steering wheel sensor. All is good now. Good and Tight, I'll run it back up speed wise now with no concerns. Before the swap I was leary at 80+ mph.

 

TTT on this although I'm pretty sure I'm in the same boat as RL. I looked at it some more yesterday and the rag joint looks tight and the rack pinion seems to be responding to the input but the wheels don't move. Also when I jacked up the front the tie rods seemed tight and trying to move the wheels with my hands while they were suspended resulted in no movement.

So if the play is in the rack and it has to be replaced (yay, that will be lots of fun!) is there something that could have contributed to it's premature looseness? I've only tracked it once and the fluid had been replaced when I put the supercharger on. Could it be from too many rack removals? Before I got it it had a cam (1), then the crank pulley came loose (2), then I put another cam in and installed the supercharger (3), then I sliced the oil pickup o-ring so (4).

 

As an update to my situation; It's pretty much like yours. Trying to turn the wheels when jacked was tough to start but as soon as they moved a little then they turned with no problem.

I guess when I was driving and would steer either way there was a bind then oversteer. I only had a 6K on the 08 at the time. Driving over 80 was scary.

It's been doing great as normal since I replaced the rack. We recently did the tail of the dragon and I averaged 30 mph so that made for a really good work out of the steering and suspension. I would never had tried it that hard with the old rack.

What topped mine off was when I sent in the old rack to get my core charge back they told me mine was not rebuildable. So my rack ended up costing a little over 500.00 but that was still a lot less than dealer and I am glad I did not risk 300 to 400 on a used one.

I did not get to see why my old one was shot. They claimed the inside was completely ground up with metal like the seal was bad and let in a lot of water. They threw it away before they told me about it which pissed me off thoroughly and caused us some problems. I could have stripped off tie rod ends and some other stuff and sold it to recoup some money.

If you have access to a TechII you can check the steering sensor to see if it's still zeroed out. IF it's off it will cause some problems with the way it steers. Mine was actually apply the brakes ever so slightly due to the wrong input signals and with the active handling it would keep applying the brakes trying to compensate. I had a ton of brake dust built up from it. You really could not tell the brakes were being applied but it all added up.

 

BTW Still love that avatar, Dayum.