Hi all, My S3 has had a power steering leak for a while and recently it got to the point where i was filling up an empty reservoir every few days I went ahead and ordered myself a seal kit, (going to order myself some poly bushings while the rack is out) anyways sadly my leak is not at the tower which seems easily replaceable, my leak was coming from the passenger side boot, currently the rack is out but i have no clue as to how to go about disassembling and replacing the seals on this side ( for reference this is the side furthest from the tower and the leak seems to be coming from the larger black piece that connects to the main rack right before it becomes the tie rod.

 

I tried this task on my S3 in 2019, but was not able to get the correct main seals for either end of the rack. I bought two sets of seal kits, one for the older version and one for the newer version of Adwest rack, and neither contained the correct ones, although all the other seals were correct. I sourced seals locally after much searching (think they were for a forklift or something similar) but then found it impossible to fit one of them into the cylinder as it is located very deep inside and probably needs a special tool for fitment. You also have to get the splines of the rack through the seal without damaging it when reassembling, which probably also involves a special tool. I ended up having to buy an exchange rack and send mine back. It was very expensive with freight and import duty, especially as the customes authorities were unkind and levied duty on the exchange surcharge too!

I once successfully overhauled a power steering rack from a Series III E-Type, but that was a slightly different design (1971 compared to my 1985 XJ6).

There were quite a few variations in the design of the steering rack, so it might be that you can overhaul yours despite the problems I encountered, so as you already have the kit it is worth trying first. You need to remove the tower and the track rods, then undo the large locking ring that holds the two parts of the cylinder together to open it up,.

The rack is the same as used on the Triumph Stag, and here is a link to some instructions for overhauling:

https://triumphowners.com/resource/p...-instructions/

In these instructions there is a sleeve withing the rack cylinder that houses that main seal I had trouble with. My rack did not have a removable sleeve, hence the problem encountered.

 

I posted tons of detail on the steering rack try to find it my user name is shtekler