Weblog of Neill Horsman

So the steering spacer arrived today along with a almost everything else id been waiting on.

Here you can see the solid bush to the left and the standard rubber bush to the right.

So to start off documenting the install of this part i will first mention, my engine is NOT in the car.. making this task 100% easier.

First i started by undoing the 4 nuts that run through the bush, now the threads on the bolts have been intentionally damaged by Nissan after it was put together, so if one every came undone while driving the nut could never 100% fall off causing loss of steering, so these nuts are a bit difficult to remove.

It is best to have the wheels pointed straight for this and the steering lock on so nothing moves and the column wont turn while undoing the nuts..

Once i had everything undone i still couldn’t separate the two ends as the column was still tight onto the steering rack. As i am swapping steering racks next week i undone the knuckle to the rack and pulled it off from here so i could split the bush.

You can see in the above photos first with the Bush removed and 2nd the Steering in knuckle i undone and pulled off the splined shaft. With the knuckle, spray some WD40 down there to loosen, also try to pry the knuckle apart a bit where the bolt goes through to loosen more, then grab onto it and pull/wiggle with all your might!!!

Now with all the parts on the bench pull you will have:

• 2xMetal braket things
• 4xPlastic collars
• 4xMetal collars in the rubber bush

Now we want to use all these parts on the metal bush. memorise how it all goes together on the rubber one as we want to run the same configuration on the metal bush.

With this next step i had heard that the holes in this particular Metal bush are too small for the collars and this was correct. I had to drill out the holes a tad, no more than a mm as you still want them tight.

try use basically the same size drill bit as the hole, and just gentle move the drill side to side in the hole to pull off a small layer of alloy.

Now the metal collars will still need a tap with a hammer to go in, but will now fit and fit snug.

Place the rubber collars over the metal collars, 2xeach side. then add the metal brackets to each side..

Now the next step is tricky.. installing this bush back in with the column unbolted from the rack.

Once you bolt the 2 sides of the column to the bush you may or may not be able to get the steering knuckle back onto the splined shaft off the rack as there is now no play/flex in the bush to have the room to get it over.

As i mentioned i am swapping steering racks so will have mine out and when installing the new, i can fit it up then.

But for most this is not the case,.

On the steering column just above the knuckle you will see another bolt and some more splines, you need to losen this bolt and seperate like with the lower splines section, and slip the lower part of the column down into here further.. to get the room you need to get everything back on. Once everything is bolted back on you will need to slip this back to the same or near abouts place.

And then your done