Reviews of MEYLE steering rack

New: Meyle steering rack (manual), ignition housing, OE upper bushing/thrust ring, turn and wiper stalks. I switched the steering wheel to Rabbit specific but the noise/vibration was the same.

In my experience (and granted it was several years ago now), those Meyle Racks are complete garbage. The first one had the gear that is turned by the end of the u-joint start to pit and deform because it was too soft and machined poorly. It only took a couple thousand miles before it was grinding and had a lot of play in it.

It was about 8 or nine years ago when I put a brand new Meyle rack on my Cabriolet after the replacement Maval power rack failed 1 month out of warranty. The new Meyle rack was fine for about 6 months, but when I went to get the car aligned, the tech brought me out to show me that the inner tie rod was bad. It wasn't the tie rod but the actual toothed rack moving inside of the tube. I tried adjusting with the threaded adjuster on the back to take out any slop but that only made it so tight I could hardly turn the steering wheel. It appears to have worn internally between the pinion and the toothed rack rod thing. That's pretty pathetic for a new steering rack to essentially fail within a few months of gentle commuting duty.

Also, steer clear of those Meyle POS aftermarket racks. Absolute 100% pure garbage.

So, I'm on my second brand new Meyle steering rack in as many years. Is there any other company (that DOESN'T make them in ****ing China) that makes new manual steering racks? I wasted $123 on this one from Autohaus AZ and Meyle I have to keep spending my hard-earned money on alignments every time i get a new one.

As much as I dislike the quality of the current Meyle racks, I don't think the rack could not be the cause of that because I compared an original rack rod to a new Meyle one and they are the same length.

For those of you replacing your steering rack with a Meyle Brand manual steering rack you might want to take note. If you follow the bentley procedure for centering the rack and then setting the length of your tie rods it will not work. The passenger side measurement is off.

The verdict on the old rack is in now that I have it off the car and in the vice. It is no good. When I turn the pinion shaft, the feel is very rough and unlubricated-like. Adjusting the pinion torque makes no difference; even with a very light pre-load, the roughness is still there.

I have narrowed the noise to the steering rack itself. It is a Meyle rack. 171419063. It has been on about a year and a half. I'll try tightening the pinion torque a smidgen tomorrow to try to solve the problem. I don't notice any play in it.