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Thread: Rack and pinion steering in a 1953 Roadmaster.

  1. #1
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    Rack and pinion steering in a 1953 Roadmaster.

    G’day guys, I’ve had a bit of a look through the site but can’t really find anything on this.
    My question is have any of you buick blokes put rack and pinion steering into a 53? If so how did it go?


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  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by 53Roadmastercoupe View Post
    G’day guys, I’ve had a bit of a look through the site but can’t really find anything on this.
    My question is have any of you buick blokes put rack and pinion steering into a 53? If so how did it go?


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    I've done two rack and pinion conversions on similar Buicks. The short answer is you can't do it without cutting up your frame and spending some $$$ and serious labor.

    Even if you found a rack and pinion setup that was the right size and physically mounted in place, it wouldn't work. the width of the rack and pinion in the middle, between the flex joints, needs to be the same width as the distance between the inner pivot points of the lower control arms of your car. this way the geometry and angle of your tires stays the same as the suspension moves up and down. These old buicks have huge lower control arms and have a very small distance between the two. There are no power steering racks made this narrow, nor could there be with the amount of right to left throw they would need to work. I've seen some linkage setups that try to engineer out of this problem with rack and pinion, but that's some hokey work.


    That being said, if youre not afraid of an angle grinder, welder, and have some extra money burning a hole in your pocket, jaguar front suspension fits beautifully under these cars and your car will still look original on the outside. I have put several thousand miles on my car with great results. Here is a link to a 56 Buick with pictures of this process.

    https://www.teambuick.com/forums/sho...pecial-Project

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by jacob View Post
    I've done two rack and pinion conversions on similar Buicks. The short answer is you can't do it without cutting up your frame and spending some $$$ and serious labor.

    Even if you found a rack and pinion setup that was the right size and physically mounted in place, it wouldn't work. the width of the rack and pinion in the middle, between the flex joints, needs to be the same width as the distance between the inner pivot points of the lower control arms of your car. this way the geometry and angle of your tires stays the same as the suspension moves up and down. These old buicks have huge lower control arms and have a very small distance between the two. There are no power steering racks made this narrow, nor could there be with the amount of right to left throw they would need to work. I've seen some linkage setups that try to engineer out of this problem with rack and pinion, but that's some hokey work.


    That being said, if youre not afraid of an angle grinder, welder, and have some extra money burning a hole in your pocket, jaguar front suspension fits beautifully under these cars and your car will still look original on the outside. I have put several thousand miles on my car with great results. Here is a link to a 56 Buick with pictures of this process.

    https://www.teambuick.com/forums/sho...pecial-Project
    Thanks for the reply Jacob. I had looked at the acumen principal for the geometry of this and yeah wasn’t sure if it could be done. I think it will be a case of grafting another front end on to achieve this.


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