TRE's

OK, so lets talk track rod ends. When I was building my roadster, I knew that steering was a challenge. Lots of options had been explored, and every conversation always ended up with 'mark 2 steering rack'.

On the flip side, there was a healthy market for second hand racks. It took me about a week of searching on Facebook marketplace and in the various Locost groups to find someone local to me who had a spare rack. £50 and 10 miles down the road, and I had a remarkably good condition rack. It needs a lick of paint (and maybe new bellows if I'm really picky) but a bargain nonetheless.

Next step, extensions. Now this is where it gets tricky. The normal practice for the Sierra based car is Ford TRE's, but the rack is nowhere near wide enough. The book talks about some 150mm extenders, so I got straight on that and bought some. £15 and I had them in the garage.

Fast forward to last weekend, and I found a flaw in my plan. The rack plus extenders could actually get to the upright holes, there was no space for a TRE. Fail number one...

Turns out there are shorter extenders needed, so I set about figuring out how to shorten them. But then I found another post, cue fail number two...

Shorter extenders would have only got me halfway. The MX5 uprights have a quite severe angled tapered hole for the TRE's. If you use the standard Ford option (which are right angled), then the general consensus is that at full droop, the track rod gets caught between the upright and the lower suspension arm, and the TRE reaches it's maximum angle. Either of these could result in damage or break. Not good on suspension or steering components!!

So while fail number two was imminent, I'd finally managed to catch up with myself and not fall into that particular hole. The solution is to use an MX5 TRE, these are angled in the same way as the upright. This means that at full droop, the TRE isn't at full travel. This is how the MX5 (left) and Sierra (right) TRE's compare;

The difference in angle is quite plain to see. The only thing is, the difference in internal thread isn't so plain to see!!!

Yep, although I had an Escort rack, and Escort extensions, they won't screw into the MX5 TRE's. What's more, as I mentioned above the Escort extensions were too long. I couldn't have used ANY TRE let alone an MX5 one.

Then I found out about thelatheman, an Ebay seller in Lancashire who does lots of custom lathe work. And what's more, after asking him whether he could do what I want, he actually pointed me to an Ebay item that was exactly what I was after! It was a shorter extension, with an internal thread for the Escort thread, and an external thread to fit the MX5 TRE. They are a bit more expensive (£37 vs the £15 I paid originally), but since it's the best/easiest/quickest option, it was a no brainer really. So I'm now just short of £60 lighter, £21 for a pair of MX5 TRE's and £37 for the extensions. Fingers crossed they arrive by the weekend and I can try them out.