Tie Rod Thoughts

[Seabea23]

I am thinking about converting my old narrow track car to wide track. Rather than use the screw on tie rod extensions which come in the Caterham wide track kit, I would rather use proper wide track tie rods if possible. Is it a big deal to open up the steering rack and swap to wider tie rods? I appreciate that this is only an aesthetic change as for road use the handling advantage is questionable.

[ECR]

Not especially difficult. If the design has stayed the same. You need to drill out a retaining dowel on the inner joint in order to unscrew it and remove the tie rod. On fitting the new rod you drill a new hole and insert a dowel ( a piece of 3mm m/s in my case. If you look on SELOC they have an article on refreshing the Elise rack which is virtually identical.The new dowel needs to be deep enough to just enter the rack in order to prevent the joint unscrewing in use and the edges of the hole should be peened over with a centre punch to retain the dowel

 

[Wrightpayne]

That process is the same as the classic mini rack. You only get 3 goes and its then scrap.

Is the SV rack the same width as the standard rack + spacers?

[7 wonders of the world]

you can get the pins from Titan - depending what mood they are in...!

or get a short length of silver steel from fleabay

also worth sleeve the new track rods with heat shrink to prevent corrosion.

[Seabea23]

Thanks Gents for the info. I happened upon the SELOC article yesterday, very informative.