[maxmitchell]

Car is a 2008 335 xi E92.

I had a questionable shop change out my steering rack. about $600 parts and $800 labor. i kept the old rack (leaking).

The shop did not have the ability to do an alignment, so they got it aligned OK (drive able), and sent me on my way. The steering wheel is about 45 degrees clockwise from center. I have an orange "brake" light and an orange "! 4x4" light on in the dash. This all seemed expected and not too alarming to me. The car seemed to drive OK, but not exactly normal.
I immediately made an appointment at a nearby Firestone service center to get it aligned.

The next day at Firestone, they tell me the rack was put in wrong, and they cannot do the alignment. I called the place that installed the rack. They said the new rack did not have a plastic guide flag on the splined input shaft. they marked it up as best they could and installed it without the guide flag. I think the plastic piece serves as both a guide flag and also a dust shield. while the guide flag feature is only a nice-to-have to help installation, if has not been replaced with some alternative form of dust seal, that would be a problem.

My hope is that i can loosen the clamp bolt holding the ishaft onto the splined rack input, collapse the ishaft up into the column a little, then rotate my steering wheel over to the correct angle, and re-mesh the splines. I will probably try to re-center my tie rods first since they are probably currently all the way to the limits of adjustment.
I will also check to make sure there is some form of dust seal on the rack where the guide flag should have been. If not, then i will try to pull the guide flag off my old rack, and sneak it onto the new rack without completely removing the new rack.

I also hope that the brake and !4x4 warning lights will go off after a few miles of driving with the steering wheel back on-center?
After all that, i will take it back to Firestone for alignment. I'll remind them that they should be weighing the car down per the BMW specs when they do the work.

Does this strategy make sense?

At this point my biggest concern is the guide flag / dust seal. Do remanufactured steering racks come without a guide flag? is there some different piece of plastic used in its place that at least serves as a dust shield.

if I find that the new rack has no dust shield whatsoever, is it a good idea for me to pull the plastic piece off my old rack and put it on the new one? can i do this without completely removing the new rack? should i chop off the flag feature to avoid adding further complication?

Thanks!
Max

[maxmitchell]

Can anyone answer weather or not the steering shaft collapses up into the column a little?

[rick100]

Let me ask you once thing. Did you buy the steering rack and the shop provided the installation? or did the shop buy the part ?

Reasoning for asking this is that if the shop bought the part and did the installation they should be fixing this problem and it should not be your problem whether the part came with the guide or not . Now if you provided the part , then still the shop should ve done it right but again they did what they could with what they have ( something you provided)

I wouldn't even touch it , I would take it to a different shop that can also do the alignment , sure is going to cost you , but it should also teach you to do your research before taking your BMW to any shop, unfortunately these cars are not civics or gmc that just anyone can do work on them. You trying to fix it on your own may mess it up even worst and then other problems may arise. Been there before

Tough call . I m not even sure I can trust the shop that did the work the first time . Personally I ll take it as a lesson in life and take my car to a reputable shop , but again , I m a bit older so I been through stuff like this before and I learned my lesson a long time ago ( 5oo$ in the garbage on my mazda 3)

[maxmitchell]

The shop purchased the part.

I agree with everything you say. Money is a little tight as my wife and I just had our second kid, and she does not currently work.

When I took the car to this corner shop I was pretty sure I just needed new lines. Believe me, I'm kicking myself for not flat-bedding the car to my usual place (30 miles away).

That being said I have an update. Perhaps this will help others...

I re-centered the tie rods and put a slight toe-in by eye with the help of a meter stick. In this situation, the steering wheel has gone from being 45deg clockwise to 135deg clockwise on center tire position (as basically expected). I marked a reference line and took a bunch of photos of the dust cover on my old rack. Then I removed the dust cover with a gear puller. Came off ok with no damage, but requires a little patience.

Tomorrow I'm going to (slowly) drive the car back to the crappy shop and use their lift and tools to re-position the spines on the ishaft to the rack. Going to try and shimmy in the dust cover too. Might have to chop off the shark fin first. Then I'll re-slip the ishaft female spline back on to the rack male spline, then go drive it to get aligned proper.

I still don't know if my ishaft will collapse a little up into the column. That will determine weather this is a 2 hour job or a 6 hour ordeal. I'll update when done.

[Manual Transmission]

I can't speak to the steering rack issues but once the wheel is straight again the lights will go off after a bit of driving. I recently had the same issue after DIYing some suspension work and made a post about some similar lights. You can check my post history for more details.

[rick100]

Best of luck!