Rack and pinion steering: bay window van

[baybirmingham]

Hi, newbie here diving straight in with a technical question. I should point out that I've read Neil-C's thread on rack and pinion steering, but I thought it best not to resurrect that one, as I have a couple of more specific questions of my own.

I've noticed that most of the information I've seen on this forum about rack and pinion steering has been aimed at splitties, but I'm interested in the possibility of this conversion for a bay. I have a 1973 twin slider microbus converted to a camper.

Is it possible to do the same conversion as Neil-C's on a bay, using the Bedford Rascal rack?

Will the same replacement idler arm used on that conversion work on the Bay or is it going to need a different redesign?

A Rascal is quite a bit lighter than a Bay camper - is the steering rack robust enough to cope with that weight of van or am I setting myself up for a ticket to automotive death?

Are there any other types of racks used for a Bay conversion? I've tried ransacking the internet and I haven't found anything.

Many thanks, and apologies for just diving in like this for my first post.
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Ambitious but rubbish

[richbaker78]

hi Baybirmingham - welcome to the site.

Neil Cs conversion is doable on a bay -me, JP and i think Alex FTS have done it. We used his buck to get the arm cast and the angles work out fine. JP and myself have also added EPS (power steering) to it to make it even easier. Neither of us have road tested yet but garage trieals look very promising.

other rack conversions have been done - Ive read about Vauxhall astra racks being used, someone on here transplanted porsche front suspension and used a rack with it, and if you want to remortgage your house you can of course use the Creative enigneering option which is a bolt on.

I think i covered the rack conversion in my build thread.....some steering stuff here anyway
http://www.vwkd.co.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=254&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=96&sid=5062ac88ea370eab9fdaf42b54f90a09

[baybirmingham]

[richbaker78]

no probs - I doubt there are spares going around as only a few of us have done Neils conversion. He was lending out the buck to get the arms cast (thats how we did it) so if you can PM him im sure he can tell you more.

We got a local casting firm to cast them i think it cost about £80? and then got them machined by another local engineering company. I guess budget £150 for the idler arm. Of course there are economies of scale so might be worth trying to get a couple of these bashed out if you can get together with a couple mates like we did to do it.

The Idler is the most expensive bit - the rest is very straight forward and cheap.

Someone was talking about making an idler out of box steel - that might be a sheaper alterantive if your good a fabircating and welding.