Steering rack overhaul
 

The car has developed an incontinent problem where by it can’t hold onto its power steering fluid, and quite suddenly too, there hasn’t been a warning trail leading up to it dumping fluid, within the space of a mile it had emptied its reservoir.
A quick investigation has pinpointed the leak to the drivers side gator so I suspect the seals let go. My question is can seal kits be obtained anywhere? A quick search on google doesn’t bring anything up. It would’ve nice to have a kit ready to go without having to source seals once removed.

As a side note, how are the slave cylinders holding up? While I’m wrestling with the subframe I’m very tempted to do the clutch for piece of mind but if they’re still prone to failure I may as well hang onto whatever’s fitted.

You could try this company Reece.

As an aside, the fluid is escaping from the gaiter. Gator is American for alligator! :D It's probably your computer's fault.

Simon

Google spells it as gaiter.

macafee2

Thanks Simon, I’ll make an enquiry. Plenty of folk happy to sell you a refurbished unit on an exchange basis but not many willing to sell £5 worth of o-rings and seals... wonder why!
Obviously typing too fast and auto correct got the better of me this time, doubt it’ll be the last either!

Good question is why Rover supplied not only full overhaul kits for both the early and late SD1 steering racks, and even a seal kit but not for the 75?

A recent post https://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/for...d.php?t=311313 shows that such elusive things, in this case a pump gasket set, are out there. Probably there's a kit for the power steering racks too, trouble is finding it.

I've been on the AutoDoc site and searched for the same kit Nils found, but can't find it when I search by registration (think it was anyway for a Discovery) or using Meat & Doria in the search menu. Yet his link takes me straight there. Obviously his detective skills are better than mine:}

Good luck

Likely because the racks fitted to these cars weren’t ever meant to be serviceable, or because the racks fitted to sd1’s and the likes were bad enough to warrant supplying a service kit for them.

In fairness given the numerous 75’s I’ve had over the years this is the first one I’ve had pas issues with. They tend to be fairly reliable systems.

Your reasoning might apply to the earlier, I think it was Burman racks but the later Alford & Adler ones were, at least in my opinion, very reliable. That said, any 20 year old seals are likely to be "best before" so it's unfortunate that Rover didn't follow their earlier practice.

Perhaps someone knows the manufacturer, and if still around, it might be worth contacting them.

Good luck

Reece
As far as I am aware the original Rack seal kit was TRW AS14132

Which seems to check out with a quick search of ebay
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Power-Ste...f680%7Ciid%3A1

Have a look at this company ,
https://www.jpat.co.uk/index.html

https://jpat.co.uk/uploads/1/0/3/5/1..._catalogue.pdf See Page 19

Worth pricing and seeing if available ,
If you decide to go the reconditioned route just be aware, I have come across steering racks that have been rebuilt wrongly , having the pinion shaft (flat) not in the correct orientation to the centre of the rack meaning the steering wheel not centred on refitting. It will also affect the indicators cancelling . Just be aware to check this against your old rack with the rack centred or if overhauling double check the position of the pinion flat with the rack centred before stripping down
Steve

I consider myself a competent engineer and in my experience it is better to let the professionals do a job like this. Yes the seals can ware and harden but the metal parts can also ware and new seals will not overcome this.

I use these people https://www.kileyclinton.com/ to do steering racks and they come back as good as new and a 12 months warranty. I have had racks from other suppliers that leak in a few weeks of days and apparently a lot of companies dont even leak check them and when you consider over 1000psi is involved.

Fitting the rack and finding it leaks is a complete ball ache in my view let alone getting the tracking done again.

A very useful post, thank you for that. Should be able to find what I need from that catalogue :)