ok so on my old rack and one i pulled off a donor 96 vdp... there is a spline the lower collumn connects to. on the spline is a knotch that the lower collumn bolt runs against.

on the broken racks when i turn spline all the way to the left ( trying to center rack) . the knotch for the bolt is facing the rear.

on the rebuilt rack the knotch is facing me (180 degree ) . so when i center the new rack its 180 degree from the other two. now when i try to install the lower collumn cant connect because the knotch is 180d. is there a way i can fix this? the new rack is exactly the same as old one beside the spline being 180d

 

 

 

any one?

 

Do the racks have the same numbers on them? I was thinking they could be for left and right hand drive, but just realised the pinion tower is at an angle to the mountings. Maybe the pinion shaft was installed 180 degrees out when it was rebuilt. Is it possible to remove and rotate the pinion shaft? on my car the notch is facing the rear.

 

it is a rebuild rack

Zf model even has the servo connection.
all numbers are EXACT

when installing the rack the notch on the spline faces me
the new rack can not be installed as the notch is facing away

to flip the spline i would need many special tools i do not have

 

If you look at the parts diagram on Jaguar classic parts, you will see that there are in fact three splined joints in the lower steering column in the engine bay. It isnt clear whether they are each uniquely positional like the joint which attaches to the rack, so it would be worth having a look to see whether you could alter their orientation to allow both the refurbished rack, and the steering wheel to be centred correctly. If this doesnt work, you might need to make the adjustment by taking the steering wheel off of its splines and realigning it, taking care to make sure the indicator self cancelling is adjusted too.
I would be very wary about taking the rack to bits....

 

going to return it