:lmao:
HAHA, I made you waste as much of your time as I wasted of mine! Now you know what it's like being an engineer, it's like ADD but with boring technical stuff...
Just to repeat, no criticism intended for misusing the terminology. Common usage of these terms is different from the actual definition, so if the conversation is drifting into a technical discussion,you have to go to church on your terminology and start using the right definition.
Without wasting too much more time, I'll just boil it down to a couple points:
I don't know that brass is a "better" bushing material just because it's stronger. Stronger isn't always better. I would bet that nylon has a much lower coefficient of friction than brass, so maybe nylon is actually better. I would have to do some research before being convinced brass is better. Ultimately though, I'm not going to worry about it because it isn't worth the effort to find the answer (for me at least)
That's an interesting point on the steering configuration.
On the stiffness, new ITRE's often are very tight, so that might be part of it. Agree that the guide probably isn't the issue. I would still question the effect of the rack on the looseness though. There are so many other things that affect looseness over bumps that I would struggle to believe that the factor turning it on and off is the rack. You may have had terrible luck with 2 reman's, but statistically speaking, 2 bad rack out of the box should be EXTREMELY unlikely.
If it is not centering itself, then yeah, I might start taking a look at your pump. It should return to center on it's own. When I had my guide overtightened, it didn't return to center, so if you adjusted that, then maybe you do need to back it off a little bit.
One point that hasn't been discussed here is to double check that whatever rack you buy has the new design of the rack guide on it. Napa had both versions, so I had to order the rack for an 01/02 and not the one for my 00. The 00 rack had the roller guide.
