There had been several things I was planning to spend some money on soon, my car being one of them. As my automotive luck would have it, I will be doing just that today — by replacing components in the rack and pinion steering system.

Last Wednesday afternoon on my way back from lunch my steering wheel started to behave very strangely and control of the car went into a variable. The "slop" or give in the resistance of the steering gave out completely, creating a possibly dangerous situation as far as total loss of vehicular control. However, the damage was not yet to the extent that it came to that. Maintaining a firm hold on the wheel, particular during any turns or curves, prevented the car from making turns on its own. An inspection of the RPS gearbox revealed the rack-and-pinion gearset where the wheel gear (pinion) meshes with the toothed rack converting rotary to reciprocating motion (and vice versa), was chewed-up pretty badly and only getting worse.

At the highest recommendation from someone I work with at the office and who I have done on-site support for recently, I took my car in to a local repair shop early this morning where I was given an 80% change of repair completion today (the parts are not slated to arrive at the shop until 1400 EDT, leaving only three hours for installation).

I was instructed to ring the repair shop at 1600 EDT to check on the status of the installation and to determine whether I will be with vehicle this weekend. An update will follow subsequent to that time, so stay tuned.

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