I've been hesitant to post my full review of the PCF Steering Rack Bracket due to my role as Admin as the support of a sponsor's product could be misconstrued - but I also have a responsibility as a beta tester of this product. I'm also of the realization that some will take my review at face value and the conspiracy theorists will use or abuse my post as they see fit.
I've got about 3000-4000 miles on the Bracket and at least three off road trips, including a week in Moab, and the PCF Steering Rack Bracket has not let me down. There steering and handling fix was immediate, getting rid of a knock in my steering and eliminating the shiver that ran through my truck whenever I hit offset bumps in the road.
The real test was Moab. I had my skid plates off multiple times that week to inspect the Bracket. The rack did not move from it's fixed position. Period.
There were several tests of it, including Hell's Gate, but perhaps the biggest one was the crack on Seven Mile Rim. For those that have done this, you may recall that you hit the crack at about 30 degrees and you hold the steering wheel tight as you lower into the crack, as the ground tries hard to change the direction of the wheels. Well, when I entered it I was not paying attention and I let the ground grab the wheels and I sat in the crack with the wheels offset at 30 degrees. The safe (and smart) option would have been to back out, straighten out, and do it again.
As I sat there, I realized I could go forward by man-handling the steering and forcing it back to the right. Only two results could occur: a spectacular failure or a proven success, where the PCF Bracket held its own against an extreme circumstance. As you can guess, I was able to force the steering back to straight with no failures, no movement, no loss of alignment, no breakage. I would not have tried this with a stock setup, and without a spare steering rack nearby. This is with a four year old, 80,000 miles of wear and tear rack.
I've discussed the driver's side bushings with Dwaine and I directly questioned why he would not include those in his solution. His answer: they aren't necessary as his Bracket is designed in such a way to eliminate the need for those bushings and in fact, his solution comes closer to getting to what the OEM solution was probably supposed to be, had it been executed properly in the first place. I don't blindly follow Dwaine's answers; I mesh them with my own beliefs and of course the real world results. Here's another example of where the real world results back up his answers as the Beta testers like me have been fortunate enough to discover.
Perhaps the best way to describe the OEM rack: it's a piece of crap, designed poorly with low structural integrity. So, on that assumption, would you rather have external forces from steering absorbed by the poor construction of the rack or by the vulcanized rubber in the driver's side bushings? Should the external pounding be absorbed by a thin, weak, fixed joint or by a built in shock absorber? Think about it: GM designed the "floating" rack mounts to help compensate for the structural weakness of the OEM rack. We've all talked about strengthening one component only to cascade the failure down the line to the next component.
4speedfunk has perhaps the best solution to this mess: SAS
