Steering rack grease (or oil)

Fiataccompli

Fiataccompli

Chris Granju
The shop manual says use 90 EP or lithium/moly grease.....I just finished replacing the right side bushing on my '85 and the left side boot & the gear housing were pretty nasty from probably years of seeping. My gut feeling is grease is a better bet viscosity-wise for staying place & doing it's job. Is there a collective wisdom here on that. Believe it or not, I've never had the pleasure of doing anything "real" with steering racks (plenty of power steering pumps & related bits on appliance cars & most of my years of Fiat ownership has been characterized by cars with steering boxes not R&P).

Anyway, I'm stopping by a parts store later, so I'd love to hear what the wiser folks here would buy to put in the rack.

thanks in advance!
 
I would use the molybdenum grease. You can probably get small tubes of it, but the red stuff that looks like wheel bearing grease is probably cheaper.
 
I'd also agree that grease might be a better choice. Less likely to leak and the relatively small motion of a steering rack doesn't seem to need any 'circulation' of a lighter lube like say a gearbox would.
A bit of a wild thought, but is there any location on the rack where a grease fitting (zerk nipple) could be added to lube it while mounted in the car? It's not very accessible and not really needed, but it would be a nice little feature to have - like other suspension components often have (ball joints, pivot bushings, etc).
 
It would appear there is. If I still had a pile of semi-crap X1/9 racks (some, I'm sure the older style), I would experiment, but alas they're gone. It's a nice idea, but not necessary. I have a '79-up X1/9 manual & a 128 manual, so I believe I have some data for both style racks. Frankly, the leaking did not appear to be prolific enough to warrant even opening it up beyond pulling back the boots. And...the rather addressing splayed "stance" of my right lower front fender (subtle, but about 1/2" right & 1/4" or so low...damnit!) & proper wiring (PO deleted the thermo-switch & used a pair of wires to a dash switch instead...why?) for the fan seem like a better investment of my currently in short supply spare time!
 
The oil is probably better to lube the ball bearing supporting the pinion shaft. And it probably flows better than grease on cold mornings! 128 factory manual calls for 90W oil but any lube is better than none! :)
 
Early Fiat 128 - exxe steering racks had gear oil as original fill and is spec'ed in the Fiat service manual. This is ok, long as the boots do not leak. Eventually, Fiat changed the fill and spec to moly grease.

Suggest using a synthetic grease with moly like Red Line CV-2 or similar instead of oil. Moly grease does not spill out like oil, tends to stay put and since the steering rack has modest movements, grease should be fine.


Bernice
 
I guess we poor 128 guys never got the memo... heh. Any chance they gave a quantity of grease to use? I might try it on my SL coupe. It has an oddball rack with a smaller OD than usual, which made fitting the rack bushing fun, and the boot leaked immediately. A wrap of electrical tape built up the OD to make it seal (on the bench at least) but grease might save me some future trouble.
 
E5B20E30-1203-45B2-8B77-EA2CF6165499.jpeg


(I’ll admit, I wanted to try this via phone/safari). Is 5.3oz liquid? or...wait, what state is grease...I took it to be 5.3oz of either.
 
I still haven't figured out how to do it, not that I've tried that hard...

Thanks for the info. Added to my tech files.
 
Fiataccompli said:
Is 5.3oz liquid? or...wait, what state is grease...I took it to be 5.3oz of either.
Click to expand...
I seriously doubt it is that critical exactly how much you use - especially not down to the tenth of an ounce. If I were putting grease in, I'd be inclined to not even measure how much but just make sure there is ample coverage on all of the moving and interfacing surfaces. To put it in perspective, how many ounces of grease do you pack a wheel bearing with? But I'm sure there is a specification for that somewhere to.
 
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Yes, especially for my rather pedestrian, non-racing, non-ragged-edge use, but knowing the spec is 5.x vs 2 or 8 or whatever is a good data point to have in mind when you’re filling it...or seems like it is, I should say.

Hey, at least this doesn’t open up a debate on GL1 vs GL4 vs Redline!
 
I'll bet moly grease weighs more per volume than regular grease; due to the added specific gravity of the molybdenum. There's your debate. :D
 
Fiataccompli said:
View attachment 15833
(I’ll admit, I wanted to try this via phone/safari). Is 5.3oz liquid? or...wait, what state is grease...I took it to be 5.3oz of either.
Click to expand...
.127 kg is 4.47 ounces by weight. Grease is a bit lighter than water, so 5.3 is probably liquid volume.
Practically speaking though, the right amount is "a good solid handful".
 
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