Everyone,

I'm working on a '85 740 Turbo project and I am thinking of converting to manual steering for simplicity. I am thinking of two options

1.) Simply keeping the PS rack and plugging the appropriate hoses. This would be easy but I feel like the steering effort would be way too high. Any experience with this?

2.) Swapping in a manual rack from a early 240. I am thinking that this would give a much better steering feel but I am not sure how interchangeable the 2's and 7's are in terms of racks. Has anyone attempted this? Are the racks interchangeable at all between the 2's and the 7's?

Any other options for manual steering on the 7/9's?

Thanks!
Brian

I drove my 1992 745 in "manual" mode for a few months until I got around to replacing the PS rack because it got to where the fluid leaked from the rusted lines faster than I could put it in. I occasionally added a splash of fluid to the reservoir to keep things lubricated. The effort wasn't excessive. However, there's a little bit of lost motion twisting the spool valve. To my mind, the reason for wanting manual steering would be precision and better feed-back, and you're not really getting all that from a PS rack.
--
1992 745 approaching 500k km

I just looked up the racks for 240 and 740 models in an online catalog--same rack. If you can keep your car with P/S you'll be better off. The steering will be very hard with the P/S not working---a non-power rack will work but the 740 is just too big a car to horse around without power assist. When I first built my V8 VolvOldsmobile (light weight all aluminum 3.5 litre in a 265 body) I installed a non-power rack as my 1963 V8 motor had no p/s pump. It was a day celebrated by my wife and daughter when I obtained another motor with the bracket and pump. In went a p/s rack and I didn't have to listen to complaints anymore. -- Dave