The rack & pinion steering mounting on the KE70 series are on the rear of the front crossmember.

 

Bit of "Teddy" lateral thinking here.

 

Has anyone ever fitted a KE70 front cross member to say a KE-30, 36, 55 and converted the steering over to rack & pinion ?

 

:D

I've heard of it being done before, apparently it's a whole lot of stuffing around for not so much gain? I think it was umm... someone in Tassie who did it to his KE55, the blue one, I can't remember what his name is!

I'm in the process of putting a ke70 rack and pinion setup into my ke30, but I'm using custom mounts etc, due to a lack of cross member and firewall in my car, but it seems to bolt straight in fine, the exhaust might get in the way a bit, but i havent got one of those either.

 

apparently ke70 xmembers are the same as ke30s, or so iv heard.

due to a lack of cross member

 

say what now???

yeah that would be johhny is tassie with the ke55, he has a web site

but as he said its pretty complicated

Edited April 6, 200521 yr by styler

well i'm gonna try to put a kp51(starlet) crossmember or maybe just the rack into my ke18

not wanting to go off topic, but I'm running a tubeframe, or in the process of building one up.

 

on paper, my rack and pinion setup has it custom mount on some brackets, which i just mig welded to my chassis frame,

 

iv also heard that aw11 rack and pinion fits in to the early ke corollas quite nicely, not sure on the ke30 or 70 though.

it's not so much the crossmember you need to worry about, but the fact that all the earlier crossmembers are narrower than ke70 crossmembers, so your steering geometry is all messed up. you really need a shorter rack, i'd be looking at other small cars, such as aw11 mentioned above

 

whilst jonny did put r&p in his old ke38 wagon, he did it by cutting forged suspension components and welding them back together, which is both dangerous and illegal. you'd be an idiot to do it that way