I searched for a replacement, which was considerably more difficult given the fact that our Pulsar is an SE which used a different steering rack than the more common XE. I finally located a rebuilt unit through RockAuto.com and had the last unit available shipped to the house.
I had done some reading and thought that I might be able to loosen the unit and slide it through the opening in the driver's side wheel well. This may work for the XE unit, but I sure couldn't get the rack through this opening. At this realization I began removing anything that seemed to be in the way of dropping the rack straight down, including the exhaust midpipe, front sway bar, transmission cable, and rear engine mount brackets. At this point I was able to remove the rack mounts, move the rack as far as I could to the driver's side, then drop the passenger side down and remove the unit. There was much finagling, pausing, pondering, adjusting, and bleeding during this phase.
The rebuilt unit was mostly identical to the factory unit, although I did notice that the body of the rebuilt unit was slightly smaller. This forced me to wrap the inside of one of the rack mounting bushings with a piece of rubber to ensure the mount was tight.
Now that I had figured out how to remove the old unit, the new one went in without much issue.
After the new rack was mounted, replaced all rubber hose on the low pressure lines as I suspected they had been leaking. I also installed an in-line filter between the rack and the power steering cooler to ensure that the new rack was protected from any contaminants that might have gotten into the system. I mounted the filter just behind the radiator on the passenger side box frame.
With the front of the car still on jack stands, I started the car and turned the wheels from side to side a few times to bleed the air from the system. Another one of the big tasks that I wanted to complete to make the car road worthy is now behind me!
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