Two steering racks in under two years; is it me?

GotToChange

Muscle750 wrote: »

Plus if its leaking someone has put the wrong oil in it and its done the seals it must be mineral oil on vws audi ietc

Tell me what this means..... (dumb, as I said )
Do you mean the "general" oil that is put into the car or something special for the steering? - which I "know" uses hydraulic fluid as this was what I took the car to Garage 1 for in the first place; the level was dropping but not appearing under the car but it turned out it was not quite leaving the car and had gathered in ... I want to say the cv boot but I know that's wrong so please dont mock me...
Anyway, that resulted in the "new" steering rack #1 which as I said upthread, I had forgotten that I had had done - yes, really - the car has had several things done in the last couple of years *sigh*) and had moved to a different garage in the meantime.

forgotmyname

Putting the wrong oil in can cause the seals in a rack to fail.

A vast range of oils these days. Sometimes its a miracle if you get the right one.

Manufacturers change specs every so often and give obscure codes for what you need to use. Then they change the spec.

When my car was built it used semi-synthetic engine oil. Ford have now changed that oil and the new stuff is fully synthetic.

There are some engines that dont like the change, Depends what the old seals were made from.

Thats why they sometimes say dont put additives in them. The additive may react with the seals.

MX5huggy

Are you doing anything that may account for destroying the racks?

I started the school run this year the most people bump up and down to park two wheels on the pavement. 4 bumps a day ain't going to do any good to any of the components.

andygb

MX5huggy wrote: »

Are you doing anything that may account for destroying the racks?

I started the school run this year the most people bump up and down to park two wheels on the pavement. 4 bumps a day ain't going to do any good to any of the components.

The steering rack went on my Alfa (120K miles), when I was forced off the road (up a kerb at 30MPH) by a builder's lorry coming the other way. The front n/s suspension was out of line, but the car driveable, so I drove it a few miles (pulling badly to one side) to my local garage, where they replaced a broken front droplink, and had the alloy repaired. One month later the steering rack failed - I don't think it was coincidence, as I have never had one fail on any other vehicle:(