
Billet King Rack & Pinion
F1 ENGINEERING has spent many hours designing a new rack housing system that is pretty much bullet proof, yet is a simple bolt in upgrade.
Our rack housing is CNC machined from a single billet of 6061-T6 aircraft quality aluminum, high strength aluminum bronze bushings are pressed into each end to support the rack gear,where the factory unit just floats around.
The rack gear itself is machined from a round bar of 300M alloy steel, a full 7/8" diameter on the standard 9 tooth assembly and 1.0" diameter on the 10 tooth race rack. The gear is then heat treated to 200,000 psi tensile strength and then carbon nitride plasma coated to increase tooth strength and to give corrosion resistance.
Some of our competitors use a square section rack gear as they are readily available commercially, this also makes the housing easier to machine by just milling a slot into the two or three housing half sections, this of course opens the possibility of movement or failure at the joints.
We prefer to go the more difficult route and use the stronger round section rack gear and align boring the single piece housing to maintain the structural integrity of the whole unit, this also keeps the close tolerances that we require for minimum backlash in the gears.
The helical pinion gear is CNC hobbed from H11 aerospace tool steel and through hardened.