b'Rack & Centerlink Widths Lets taLk rack & centerLink widths When were building a new front suspension from scratch, and the packaging parameters allow us to fit in a great rack & pinion, like our Sweet Road Racing racksin the correct location for optimum Ackermanthats the best way to go. Thats not to say ANY rack & pinion is better. No way. Most OEM racks & aftermarket racks copied from of OEM rackssuck. They dont have the power nor the strength to handle todays cars with 315 or larger front tires. Heck, the super common 79-93 Mustang rack fails in cars with 275 front tires. Ive seen those guys bringing not one, but two spare racks to the track. Im working with Sweet Manufacturing to develop a new, better, stronger & adjustable rack to replace the weak ass 79-93 Mustang racks used in so many applications. Most OEM racks are too wide. The C6-C7 Corvette rack & pinion is a good piece. But it is way too wide to work in applications any narrower than the C5/C6/C7. When we put a rack with the pivots too wide in a car the bump steer curve is ugly as F#$@. Yes, you can get one point of the travel to hit your target bump steer numberbut the travel above or below that is funky. We should never run a rack that has the pivots at the wrong width for good bump steer characteristics. Nor is ok to put a rack in the wrong location, where Ackerman suffers. So again, if were designing something from a clean sheet of paper, to be bad ass, like our Track-Warrior front clips or the Speedtech Extreme clips & chassis I designed that use the right width Sweet Road Racing rackthen great. Otherwise, if the car came with a steering box that utilizes a centerlink, pitman arm & idler arm linkagewe are BETTER OFF to get that system right, than to swap in a weak ass rack in the wrong location. Getting the bump steer to be happy & do what we want is a LOT of work, because if we change one thing, the other key items go out of whack. Getting the optimum rack width, or centerlink inner tie rod pivot width, is a big key to achieving a happy bump steer curve. That is why I designed the new AXT-Star Centerlink with centerlink inner tie rod pivot points that can moved in or out, as well as up or down.The challenge is, if we move the rack or centerlink pivots up or down, forward or rearward, the optimum width CHANGES. So, in designing a steering package, we have to get the window for engine & oil pan clearance nailed down first. Then we need to test combinations of height & width of the pivot points until we achieve the best scenario. Changing the suspension parameters changes the optimum steering parameters. If we take a package optimized to travel X.xx in dive & X.xwith optimum steeringand then move the control arm and/or ball joint pivots to optimize roll center & camber for a different travel and/or roll targetwe throw that optimum steering out the window. The bump steer can not stay optimum if we adjust the control arm and/or ball joint pivots. So, all of this needs to be worked out as a total combination, which all RSRT suspensions & steering have been. If you want to change the dive or roll of your RSRT package down the road, we will work with you to get the steering re-optimized.The bump steer graph we see in our suspension geometry software is key to knowing what changes we need to make. As you can see on the right hand page, if the inner tie rod pivot points are too narrow, the car will BUMP IN during front end lift, then BUMP OUT in early travel of Dive, BUT upon further dive change directions & BUMP IN again. Not good. Consequently, if the inner tie rod pivot points are too wide, the car will BUMP OUT during front end lift, then BUMP IN in early travel of Dive, BUT upon further dive change directions & BUMP OUT again. Also not good. We need to correct this with the correct width Rack or Centerlink Pivots.386'