How to Replace Power Steering Rack 2007-17 Ford Expedition

All right, friends, before we get started on this power steering rack, there's a few things that we need to think about. Firstly, you're gonna wanna flush out your old/existing power steering fluid in the system. Make sure you got brand new fluid in there before you put in your brand new part. It only makes sense, right? Next, I want you to make sure that you tie off your steering wheel. You need to make sure that there's no way that that can turn when you're disconnecting your steering shaft. And then lastly, before we start getting to work here, let's go ahead and disconnect that negative battery terminal and set it aside so it's not making any contact with the battery. Now we can continue. Go ahead and remove your center cover here. That's gonna expose your lug nuts. Remove all six of your 21-millimeter lug nuts. Remove your wheel.

Now, the next thing we're gonna do is break free our jam nut right here. There we are. Remove your outer tie rod end nut. Now, let's go ahead and use our hammer and we're gonna give our knuckle a couple of loving bonks to break this free. Now, let's use some locking pliers. Come right up on this inner tie rod end stud here, and then we'll remove our outer tie rod end. You wanna make sure you count this on the way out. What I mean by that is, here we go around, one, two, three, and then so on.

All right. So I got 23, results may vary. All right. So now let's just go do the same to the other side. Now we need to come under from the driver side front of the truck. And if you have a skid plate of some sort here, get that out of the way so you have a nice clear view like this. Looking above this cooling hose right here, along this area, you're gonna be able to find where your steering shaft connects onto your power steering rack. There should be a little 10-millimeter headed bolt on there. We're gonna remove that pinch bolt.

Couple of things real quick. This is considered a pinch bolt. So it's definitely something that's a good idea to go ahead and replace if you have access to one. If you don't, make sure you clean up those threads and make sure they're in good condition. If it doesn't look like they're in good condition, it absolutely has to be replaced. If this doesn't hold the steering rack to the actual steering shaft, obviously, there's gonna be an issue driving down the road. Okay. So now we're gonna use a nice hammer and a nice long bar like this. But before we get to using them, I wanna mention one more thing. We can't go any further until you're completely sure that you tied off that steering wheel so it can't spin and the battery is disconnected. Once you've done that, let's get under here and we're gonna use this nice long bar, and I'm just gonna try to get right up against that steering shaft there. Essentially, I wanna try to push the steering shaft off of the rack. So, I'm gonna go right up against it, give this a couple of loving bonks, and hopefully, it comes free.

There we are. Now, the next thing we need to do is remove the power steering lines from the power steering rack. There's gonna be one mounting bolt for that. That's located right in between the two. Remove that bolt and then after that, you can take off this lower line right here, and then the upper line should come off approximately the same time as well. All right. Real quick before we take off these lines, obviously, there's probably gonna be some power steering fluid in there. Make sure you have a nice collection receptacle so you can recycle it properly.

Now, we're just gonna go ahead and give both of these lines a wiggle. And like I said, they should kind of break free both on their own approximately the same time here. Okay. So I got that top one off. Apparently, it comes off a little bit easier than the bottom one first. So that's good. Set this aside. I have that one. There we go. Now, the next thing we need to do is remove the mounting bolt that holds the power steering rack to the frame itself. There's a long bolt that comes from the front of the frame to the back...

Let's go ahead and remove those bolts. I'm just gonna leave this right in the frame. There we are. Now if we just grab this power steering rack, usually you can move it to one side or the other, and you should be able to slide it right out of here. There it is, friends. All right. So now down on the floor, we're just gonna compare our new rack to our old power steering rack. Make sure you have the same overall form. Everything looks exactly the same. Also, while we're looking at it, pay attention to your lines, make sure they're not bent or pinched in any way. If they're pinched, they're gonna be a restriction. So you need to make sure you take care of that now. The next thing that we need to do is center our power steering rack. What I mean by that is to take a nice pair of locking pliers and put it right on the end here. We're just gonna turn it all the way in one direction, nice and slow here until it's completely bottomed out.

Take note of where that is. Now, we're gonna go in the complete opposite direction and we're gonna count the amount of turns, divide that in half, and that'll tell us where we're centered. One, two, three, almost four.

So three and three-quarters. You're gonna divide that in half and that's gonna help you find the center. All right. So we stopped this at approximately one and three quarters for our count. And what I'm gonna do now is just hold this up, and we wanna pay attention to the areas where the actual shaft is gonna go on. This area right here. You can see that it has a little hole or slot. Let's line that up on the new power steering rack, and that'll be where we're gonna start. There we are. It looks pretty great. Let's go ahead and take the boot off of this one, clean it up, and put it on the brand new rack. I usually like to take a little bit of grease and I'll just go along the edges here where it's gonna make contact. That's just gonna help keep the moisture out of there. We'll set this on here and now we can get this over to the truck. On your rack, you're gonna notice you have these little caps. I like to just kind of make sure that they're nice and loose so that way there I can remove them when this is up and in there. Now let's get this up in here. Start with the passenger side. It's gonna be much easier that way. There we are.

All right. Let's go ahead and tighten these up. Keep the line out of the way. Now, let's torque these bolts to 200 foot-pounds. Now, let's just go ahead and put our steering shaft onto the power steering rack. Should line up, slide that right down so it covers it completely. Now it's gonna be time to put our pinch bolt back in. Like I said, it's a good idea to go ahead and replace it. Why not just use a tiny bit of thread locker? Go ahead and start that bolt in and then we'll snug it up.

All right. We've got that bottom down. The torque spec for this is supposed to be 36 foot-pounds. It's a little bit hard to get a torque wrench in here. So I'll just go ahead and make sure that it's nice and tight. Now we just need to make sure we clean off our gaskets. Fully inspect them/replace them if you've got new ones. Just put a little bit of power steering fluid on your O-rings. Let's go ahead and get these little plugs out of here. We'll set those aside because we're gonna use them on our old power steering rack. Now let's get our lines in here. We'll just get them both kind of situated, push them both on at the same time. Just give them a little wiggle so they situate themselves in as flush as possible. Then we'll start in that bolt and snug it up. Okay. There we go. That's bottomed out. Now let's torque this to 23 foot-pounds.

Okay, friends, now it's time to install our outer tire rod end. You wanna make sure you put this in the same amount of turns that you remove the old one. Let's go ahead and put this back into the knuckle. Start our nut on there. Let's snug up the jam nut. Let's go ahead and snug the tie rod nut. And now we'll torque it to 44 foot-pounds. Now we need to pay attention to our castle nut and make sure it lines up with the hole and the stud. If it doesn't, you need to continue tightening until the next hole does. That looks good.

Let's go ahead and put our little cotter pin in here and then, of course, peen it over so there's no way this nut can loosen up. Let's go ahead and get our wheel back up on here. Start on the lug nuts and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specifications. All right. Now, with the wheel just barely touching the ground, we're gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Okay. A little center cover on there, torqued. Now, the next thing we would wanna do, of course, is to fill the power steering system. It's a good idea to take a peek inside your reservoir and just make sure that there's no debris hanging out inside there. If there is, just take a nice rag, get out the majority of it. Once you've done that, you're gonna continue on by filling this up with MERCON V power steering fluid or transmission fluid really.

Now, the next thing we need to do is get inside the vehicle. We're gonna remove the apparatus that was holding that steering wheel for us. After that, put the key in the on position, it doesn't need to be running, and we're gonna turn the wheel from lock position to lock position. Right to left, left to right. We're gonna repeat that process several times. In between doing that, we need to come out and make sure we keep checking this because it's gonna burp out air and we need to make sure we keep filling it. Make sure it's at least at that maximum line.

Now after we've bled this to the point that we don't see any more air bubbles coming up manually, we need to start up the truck and run it for a little bit. You wanna continuously watch for fluid, make sure that there's no air bubbles that are coming up and out of there, and definitely make sure that it doesn't get very low. I always try to keep it at approximately the maximum line and always keep an eye on it. Once you're all done in you're sure you have no more air bubbles after you've run it for a little while, go ahead and make sure you're at the maximum line, close it up, and take it for a road test.