Sourcing manual steering rack

Hey guys I have called many junkyards in my area trying to find a manual rack... With no luck. Anybody know where I might be able to find one other than a miracle?

How quickly do you want one? I am going to switch mine out for a power rack in the next couple of months. It is working well with new inner tie rods that fit a late offset car and will include the intermediate shaft.

Search car-part.com for an 83 944 rack, you'll get a bunch of results. Most are willing to ship it to you for a fee.

Hey thanks for the help guys that website is very helpful. I would need it by spring I suppose, the engine is not yet completed. I'm in Madison, WI the 944's around here are few and far between these days in junkyards

This post is a little late, butcheck out these two sources.

1) Ian at 944online.com . Always has lots of stuff, mostly new but he also deals in some used. He used to sell the OEM manual racks but they are NLA. He might still be able to hook you up with a used one.

2) There is a guy that goes by "LART" on Rennlist. He has an EBAY store and sells tons of random stuff. If he doesnt have something listed on the e-store, that does not mean that he does not have it or cant get it. http://stores.ebay.com/Larts-Porsche-Super-Store

I have bought from both of these sources and have been very pleased.

i have a manual rack. 150.00 plus shipping from oklahoma

I wish I could drive a manual rack car to see how it feels. It would eliminate a ton of problems - leaks... lol

i do not like the power racks in the 944's i own at this time 13 944's well a 968 and two 948's three 951's and 7 944's i swapped every steering rack to manual racks .
there is really no extra effort needed to turn a manual rack than a power one and the plus you get out of haveing more road feel is a bigger plus than any down side if there was any . on one of my 944's i did a quaife quick ratio rack that is only two turns from lock to lock . that car i use for racing with a 12" wide full slick front tires . it is a hard car to turn the wheel on when at a stand still but once moving it have more feel and feed back than any other 944 i own .

There is one for sale on Rennlist right now in the marketplace.

And a comment from the other camp...

I swapped to a manual rack when I did the conversion on my track car. I like the simplicity of manual steering and brakes. But I miss the power rack and plan to re-install it and add a hydraulic pump to the LS. The increased effort and higher ratio of the manual rack both make the car harder for me to drive.

Rich

962porsche wrote:on one of my 944's i did a quaife quick ratio rack that is only two turns from lock to lock . that car i use for racing with a 12" wide full slick front tires . it is a hard car to turn the wheel on when at a stand still but once moving it have more feel and feed back than any other 944 i own .

I can't find any info on the Quaife quick rack and pinion kit for the 944 !

Did they stop making it ?

you need a gen 2 golf manual rack and that is what the quaife kit is made for . with a couple of little mods the gen two rack fits right in place of the gen 1 VW rack used on the 944's .

There are two different manual racks for the 944 part number 944 347 011 00 has 4 turns lock to lock part number 944 347 015 00 is a "sport rack" that has 3.5 turns lock to lock. I have a sport manual rack and it is fine in daily driving with 17in 225 fronts on a late offset car. I thought about switching it out but it isn't worth the trouble.

you would not want to do the Quaife quick ratio rack kit on a car you drive on the street .
it's made for racing !
as for the foot print of a 16" wheel with a 225 and a 15" with a 225 the foot prints of the tire on the ground is about the same at 8.5 inches on a street tire and 9" on a DOT race tire .
i have run the two and found the 15" tire gives a faster lap time than the 16" tires do .
what i found is that dot race tires can not get up to the needed 190 to 200 degree tire temp to perform at there best . were the 15" Dot's do get up to the 190 to 200 degree temp . the 16's we cound only get up to 178 degrees across the face of the tires and the track temp was 137 degrees .
we run a 15X7 front and 15X8 rear with a 225/50 R6 hoosier . we have tried fatter tires and they was not as fast as the set up we are running . we found this out doing 6 test days and swapping out wheels to all different sizes 16" and 15" in widths of 7's 8's and 9's in the two size rims . there is many reasons for the 15x7 and 8's are turning faster laps than the others . the 1st is and the biggers problem rolling resistance . the foot print is on the 9" width tire is 10 inches it would seam to make sence that would be the best . but no the tire could not build the heat in it and it had the most rolling resistance with out enough heat in the tires it wil not stick . we set our cambers front and rear to give the same heat with in 6% across the face of the tires so dropping the tire pressure down any more was not an option at that point you have to change tire size if your heat is the same across the face of the tire and yet your still getting to cold of tire temps to have the tire perform at it's best .
this is why we ended up with the size tires we race with . then we found that in a 24 hour race we spend less on tires so we can buy more sets and change them out more that the other teams are keeping our lap time the same from the start of the event to the end of the event .