Blazin,
Even though a manual steering rack is shown in the shop repair manual, I have yet to see one on any Supra. I haven't seen one on any Celica as far as that goes. I have looked at literally hundreds of Supras in junk yards in the last year because I needed a manual setup for a project car. No luck. If you don't mind doing a little engineering, there are a lot of light weight manual racks from a variety of Japanese cars. One of the simplest is Mazda. You will get a 4 to 1 ratio instead of the 3 to 1 (approximately) that the Supra power rack has. You will need the additional leverage because the Supra front-end is relatively heavy. There is enough lateral movement in the Mazda rack, coupled with the slightly shorter steering arms on the hubs of the Supra so that you can get the turns that you need. The Mazda unit would be very borderline in being strong enough in respect to the cross-section of the tie-rods.
My project uses a 6mge engine with W58, but not the MkII chassis. The tie-rods are matched in length to the A-arms in the project car, which are so long that I'm having a tight squeeze fitting in the Supra engine. To make things fit (and to keep the original tie-rods in place so as not to affect the geometry) I am resorting to a late eighties Audi rack, which pivots the tie-rods from near center-point.
Here's hoping that you have better luck than I did in finding the manual rack!
Bobby L.
Even though a manual steering rack is shown in the shop repair manual, I have yet to see one on any Supra. I haven't seen one on any Celica as far as that goes. I have looked at literally hundreds of Supras in junk yards in the last year because I needed a manual setup for a project car. No luck. If you don't mind doing a little engineering, there are a lot of light weight manual racks from a variety of Japanese cars. One of the simplest is Mazda. You will get a 4 to 1 ratio instead of the 3 to 1 (approximately) that the Supra power rack has. You will need the additional leverage because the Supra front-end is relatively heavy. There is enough lateral movement in the Mazda rack, coupled with the slightly shorter steering arms on the hubs of the Supra so that you can get the turns that you need. The Mazda unit would be very borderline in being strong enough in respect to the cross-section of the tie-rods.
My project uses a 6mge engine with W58, but not the MkII chassis. The tie-rods are matched in length to the A-arms in the project car, which are so long that I'm having a tight squeeze fitting in the Supra engine. To make things fit (and to keep the original tie-rods in place so as not to affect the geometry) I am resorting to a late eighties Audi rack, which pivots the tie-rods from near center-point.
Here's hoping that you have better luck than I did in finding the manual rack!
Bobby L.
