dapinky wrote: ....it appears that the outer balljoint is held in place with a screwed on collar - maybe it'll tighten up a bit, or can be easily replaced if worn - if it can't be shimmed out.
I would expect it to be accessible without removal of the rack, but don't know how much space there will be to get a spanner on the flats whilst it's in situ.
Yup. Correct as usual.. You can turn the steering to get it sticking out of the rack to work on but MUST grip the rack with 'soft jaws' (I use bits of lead flashing that came off a roof) and unscrew against that, and make sure no load is put on the pinion teeth because it can bugger them up. It's locked with an indent into a slot in the rack so easier to undo if that is first knocked out, or drilled out if you're fitting new.
I got an MOT advisory about a bit of slack so pulled apart a rack inner ball joint to remove shims, only to find there weren't any... as Simon mentioned. (Most UK cars with rack & pinion in 60's & 70's were supplied by Cam Gears of Hitchin who used shims to tighten the inner ball joint, so I was used to finding them on Mini, Elan, Elan+2, Europa etc). Can't remember if rack was on Eclat or my first M100 SE, which is annoying me, but was first I'd found without shims and when I then looked in the manual for how tight it should be I found it said they weren't serviceable. Should probably have guessed as cup was locked by indent in a groove rather than tightened against shims but I'd 'un-indented' it with a bradle I keep for that purpose so cleaned it up, inspected it, re-greased it and put it back together. When I tightened it, it went just past the indent so I could indent with new metal and rod moved OK without slack so reckoned I'd 'serviced' some thing supposedly 'not serviceable'

That rack had a sprung loaded seat under the ball so it had quite a bit of tolerance before it would be too tight. Can remember doing it at a house we moved from in '93 so if it was M100, I did another 40,000 miles in it and if Eclat - it's still in my garage! Now need somebody to post a picture of the Elan inner ball unscrewed from the rack to put my mind at rest ...
