I have a 94 camry which needs a steering column to steering rack coupler (looks like a small ujoint, visible from under hood) My local toy dealer wants $265; can find it on-line for about $40. Must I lower the steering rack to replace the coupler? That is a pain. Has anyone ever replaced one? Dan
You should be able to replace the steering shaft u-joint without lowering or disturbing the rack.
Loosen the coupler and it should slide out of place. The shafts will then be free of each other, remove it and slide the new one on.
They are basically all the same. Go to a wrecker's and find a newer model of your car and get a genuone coupler (you didn't specify if the On-Line one was a Genuine part...) for about $20.
Is it squeaking? Just put some grease on it.
Those couplers generally do not squeak. The complaint is usually difficult steering.
Thanks for the responses
My complaint is difficult steering, not lock to lock. Just at sometimes in the turn and not all turns. I had one go bad on an old tercel with the same symptoms as my Camry. I sprayed wd40 under the rubbers and got out a lot of rusty looking lube. I just forced grease under the rubbers with a needle nose grease gun. Probable is easier to just change the coupler instead of trying different solutions.
Will let you know what finally happens.
Dan
My solution so far.
I was unable to find the source of the coupler on line again.
The 4 local (within 50 miles) used auto parts stores (junk yards) would only sell me an entire steering wheel assembly for $120. This would still be cheap compared to the $250 for a new coupler from Toy. This was much more than I wanted to spend on a Camry with 171K+ miles on it. None of the local auto parts stores (Auto Zone, etc) had a coupler.
I had to try something else. I used a needle point on my grease gun, forced it under the rubber seals on each joint and injected as much grease as I believed it could hold. This seems to have fixed it for now, hopefully another 30K miles. Maybe the car will last that long.
The intermittent difficult turning of the steering wheel has gone away and the steering wheel does return to center without effort.
Hope this info helps someone at sometime.
Dan
You need to find another Wrecker's!!
Luckily, I live near a guy that has a very LARGE Toyota Boneyard, and he usually pulls the parts for me and charges me a whopping $10-25, once I paid $30 for a damn-near-new radiator!
Poke around a little more!
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