Milano steering rack, no pain.

["Jay T Hinton" <jhinton@domain.elided>]

I have changed the steering rack on our Milano twice.    Once,  years
ago,  with a Used rack,  that leaked maybe a couple of months after.  It
was a terrible job,  took most of a weekend.  So,  after the used rack
began leaking,  I just removed the drive belt and suffered for quite a
while.

Last year,  just before the Nashville Convention,  we had plans to
drive down with Joe Fillip and his very pretty 1300 Giulia Super, 
accompaning him in our 69 Lancia Fulvia GTE 1300, but Joe kept waffling,
 as his car was being worked on and he couldn't be sure he could take
the car.  I figured I needed a plan B,  so started prepping the Milano
and there it was sitting with that darn busted rack.  I managed to order
one of the available rebuilt racks which came quickly and started
dreading changing the rack.

I personally feel its not that hard to remove the four locating bolts, 
nor the steering linkage bolt, etc.,  its sliding the rack out which is
so terrible.  So,  as before, I also elevated the engine and dropped the
exhaust system downpipes down also,  to give a little more clearance, 
but the rack was just as difficult to remove as before.  Then,  looking
around on the left side, wondering why it kept hanging up,  I finally
saw the hangup,  it was the lower metal power steering fluid line, 
which adjoins the left side frame rail.  So,  I removed it, and voila, I
reached down,  turned the rack,  and that mother slid out so easily, I
almost passed out.  Then,  wonder of wonders,  the newly rebuilt rack
did the exact same thing,  slid in just as pretty.  The entire job took
a couple of hours.  

Oh,  Joe did get his stuff together and of course,  we did drive down
in our 1300s.  But,  thats another story.

Ciao,  Jay     
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