When it comes to enhancing the handling of a classic muscle car, the first thing you think is a quality suspension. While that is true, it is far from everything you need to upgrade. Most people forget the important part of a car that is actually turning the front wheels – the steering rack. With Steeroids, we are going to be able to turn as fast as the car will allow us.

A lot of cars born during the disco era came with steering boxes – like our project Swinger Nova. A steering box is an archaic system that features one gear box that drives the wheels mechanically with steering rods. The pitman arm from the box connects to a drag link and one side of the tie rod. On the other side, the drag link connects to an idler arm that holds the drag link stable to the frame, as well as the other wheel’s tie rod. In between all this is a mess of ball joints that are completely worn out by now.

Old technology in the sloppy steering system on early generation Novas

Steeroids Rack Conversion Kit for 1968-1974 Novas

Steeroids did a great job when designing this kit. It includes everything you need and is designed as a bolt and go application. The new power rack will yield a full lock-to-lock in 2.75 turns or it’s also offered in a slower manual rack that requires 3.5 turns, which is better suited for drag racing. Wanting the quicker ratio and the ease of rack movement for use on the autocross track, we went with the power rack. Additionally, the rack conversion can save up to 25 pounds off the nose of a car like our Nova. Here is what the kit includes:

• Rack and Pinion
• Adapter Bracket – adapts rack to the chassis through A-arm bolts
• High quality tie rod ends that are self cleaning, lubricating, and teflon lined
• U-joint assembly to adapt the rack to the stock steering shaft
• Power steering hoses
• All grade 8 hardware

Converting over to Power!

We received our rack from www.speeddirect.com and was neatly packed inside its box. The kit is about the easiest part we had to install on our Nova so far. Being the engine is out of the Nova, it took us only about 30 minutes to do. First, we removed the stock gear box, idler, and tie rod ends in a matter of around six bolts.

The Steeriods adaptor bracket secures to stock mounting holes on the cross member.

From there, the Steeriods adaptor bracket fit perfectly in place on the back of the subframe with the supplied bolts. The rack then attaches to the adaptor bracket with yet another two bolts. The U-bolt link that Steeriods supplies secures with two bolts and is designed to adapt to your stock steering shaft with no modification. Screw on the outter tie rod ends and bolt them to the A-arms – simple as that! Being that the Nova is getting an LS3, we were unable to use the power steering lines included in the kit and will go the custom route if we look to have the system work cleanly with our engine.

The power rack bolts directly to the adaptor bracket and is the correct length.

The completed installation with the tie rod ends mounted to the hubs.

Steeriods made our life a breeze when it came to converting our Nova to power steering. They say a typical installation will take about three hours to install on a vehicle that has an engine, but since our Nova doesn’t have one, it only took us thirty minutes to complete. We can’t wait to get the LS3 in our Nova and get to turning around cones on the autocross with ease!