Car woes

[selenay]

So that MOT I very briefly mentioned in my last post? The one that I had been feeling good about because the car felt OK and I'd been keeping up with the tyre pressure thing this year?

Apparently I need a new steering rack. It's actually dangerous to drive at the moment. My mechanic wants "a word" to find out how I didn't notice it. It won't go through the MOT without a new one.

Er, what exactly am I supposed to have noticed?

*sigh* My mechanic seems to always end up disgusted with me for not noticing that things are wrong with my car. It's always worst when I think that I've had a good period for taking care of the car. Am now feeling angry with myself and frustrated that that's money for my move that will now have to be spent on replacing a (probably) very expensive car part. It certainly sounds expensive.

Oh, and I could have killed people by driving a car with a duff steering rack.

Can someone explain to me what a steering rack is?

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rack_and_pinion_animation.gif

the vertical wheel in the picture is at the other end of your steering column, so as you turn the steering wheel, the animated wheel turns.

Turning the animated wheel moves the horizontal toothed bar along (that's the rack), and the ends are then hooked up to the front wheels of the car, so as the rack moves sideways, so the front wheels turn sideways, providing steering.

[kageygirl.livejournal.com]

Can someone explain to me what a steering rack is?

Do you really want to know? *g*

If you look at the .gif here, the rack is the straight gear. You turn the steering wheel, the steering wheel turns the circular gear (the pinion) one way or the other, the pinion moves the rack, and the rack (I'm skipping a few parts for simplicity's sake) causes the wheels to turn.

A bad steering rack means the wheels may not respond to turning the steering wheel. Which, yeah, would be bad. But unless the steering has been feeling loose or unresponsive lately, I'm not sure how you'd know, either.

[munchkinott.livejournal.com]

*looks at more technical explanations*

Do you go over a lot of speed bumps? Is your car front wheel drive? If yes to both of these questions, then that's how your steering rack got damaged. And this I know because when Mumsie's car got nicked a few years ago the little shits kerbed it on purpose (thinking it'd break the suspension and axel, major joyrider LULZ), it didn't. It DID obliterate the steering rack - the steering wheel was so loose you could turn it in a full circle twice before the front wheels moved. :-\

[selenay]

Hmm, that makes sense. Thank you. The animations help a lot :-)

The total cost of the service/MOT is actually around what I was expecting - new steering rack instead of new tyres this time! - so I'm feeling much calmer now.

[selenay]

Animations are very good for me :-) Thank you for that - all I was digging up with my Googling was DIY methods for replacing the damn thing!

The mechanic explained how I'd know and the only thing that I'd really noticed was that it was slightly loose over rough roads and pot holes. Now I know what to look for, though!

[paranoidangel]

Clearly you need a nicer mechanic. The local one I go to can quite happily cope with people like me who know nothing.

[selenay]

Not speed bumps, but there are some major rough sections on the motorways and local roads that I use. I do 74 miles a day on those :-) So that would explain why it happened, thank you!

And wow, those are some very stupid joyriders.

[selenay]

*g* He didn't tell me off in the end. In fact he was very nice and explained the things that I should have picked up on about the steering. He also admitted that as it was happening gradually, I might not have really noticed the difference.

He's a good mechanic because he makes me feel just guilty enough not to make the same mistakes twice! Which is why I took care of my tyre pressure this year and didn't require an entirely new set of tyres...

[nic]

Sometimes I really, really hate being female and having to go get these things done (e.g. car servicing etc). I hate it when men talk down to me, assuming I'm stupid because I'm a woman and have no idea how these things work.

That's why we PAY people to fix them for us!

[munchkinott.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would definitely explain it. :-( Have a word with your pet mechanic and ask him if there's anything he can do with the suspension to take some of the impact out of it.

How Suspension Works.

If you look at the yellow steering linkage and where it connects to the blue control arm, now look at where the linkage is in relation to the green shock absorbers: Under. That means the linkage is taking the jolt of the car hitting a bump in the road and the secondary jolt of the shocks bringing the car down again. Basically, that's how your steering rack's been rattled out.

Thus, wikipedia have this to say about shock absorbers Since the tire is not as soft as the springs, effective wheel bounce damping may require stiffer shocks than would be ideal for the vehicle motion alone.

Which is useful, 'cause that sort of thing'll save you the price of another steering rack. :-D

Dude, I would like to round up all the little crash mad dummies, turn 'em into crash test dummies and happily spend a week ENCAPing the little shits so hard they need to remove their kneecaps from the parcel shelf. (Does it show that I don't like joyriders? *evil blush*)