Re: Rack & Pinion determination

["Dave Swingle" <swingle@xxxx>]

Economics. How much of your time (and what is it worth per hour) will 
it take to figure it all out? If you spend two days driving all over 
town, visiting machine shops, etc, the $350 for the rebuild is going 
to look pretty good (depends on how you value your own time). These 
vendors and "regular people" already spent the time and investment to 
figure it out, I would not expect them to give away that investment. 

This is the same argument that one can make about painting ones own 
car -if you have the time you can buy $250 worth of paint and do it, 
if you don't you pay the body man $3500. That doesn't make him a 
crook, you are paying for time, experience, and skill. If you can do 
it yourself go for it, but you can't fault the people who provide a 
service. If $350 was truly too expensive (i.e. if you could fix it 
with a $5 CarQuest bearing), nobody would pay it and the price would 
come down. 

Another thing to consider - many of these racks get really screwed up 
inside, i.e. rusty, so the rebuilder has to cover all the 
possibilities. It sounds like yours is not in too bad of shape. 

Dave S <--(rebuild most of my own stuff but I can see both sides of 
the argument)



--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "TalksToGod" <5n-@xxxx> wrote:
> Hello again all...Those of you who have taken apart your rack & 
pinion
> know there are 2 open bearings-one on top, one on the bottom-of the
> shaft with the worm gear. It seems to me that the STEEL worm gear 
and
> shaft will not wear out so very easily, so-it's the bearings that 
will
> wear before anything else even comes close. I confirmed this on mine
> by checking the wear on the bearings-sure enough only ONE (one 
closest
> to the top) was worn and is causing my rack and pinion to function
> very poorly with much play. The gears are absolutly fine with no 
wear
> what so ever. Now, why am I going to spend almost 400 dollars plus a
> core charge and shipping troubles for JUST ONE lousy bearing? It 
also
> comes to my attention that there are a large amount of people 
willing
> to sell me (regular people, not venders) used rack & pinions BUT 
ALSO
> want my old core-this I thought was very odd. This only tells me 
that
> there has got to be a cross reference for these bearings-there must
> be. Why are we paying so much money just for a bearing replacement? 
I
> refuse to pay this amount of money for 1 worn bearing-does anyone 
know
> anything about these bearings? I am determined to find one that will
> work-out of all the bearings being made in the world there will be 
one
> similar!