I had a chance to replace my steering rack over the holidays and I thought I would share my experience with you in the event some of you are considering the same procedure. In my case, my steering had gotten a bit sloppy due to excessive backlash in the steering rack plus the lower ball joints being shot. I'll only talk about the steering rack replacement here and save the fun with the lower ball joints for another time. The effect of the steering rack being shot was that the car tended to follow ruts in the road and there was a little bit of play in the wheel. The overall experience was that the steering was not very precise and generally seemed sloppy. I purchased a reconditioned steering rack from DMC (Houston). When it arrived, I was surprised at how well the unit was packed. It arrived in a sturdy wooden crate with foam inserts keeping the rack snugly in place. The reconditioned rack consisted of the rack itself plus new tie-rod ends. I was pleased to see that the tie-rod ends included the newer style flexible black rubber grease boots -- the older style beige plastic grease boots all seem to have brittled such that they tend to split as soon as they are tightened to the steering knuckle. Replacement took a little over an hour plus a trip to the alignment shop. Details on the process are on the DMCNews website at http://www.dmcnews.com/Techsection/steeringrack.html After I was done my car again has the kind of precision steering that contributes so much to the overall handling/feeling of the drive. Happy driving. Knut