Steering, Suspension, & Brakes

I am doing a dry run on fitting all the components before I get the car sprayed and I am glad I have done this. I thought I would look at fitting the steering rack today and found that the rack steering shaft is too long. The car is a rubber bumper car with an RV8 front crossmember , I am using a rubber bumper column with rack and the engine is a 3.9 RV8 with original alloy engine mounts but the rack will not fit.
This is what I have done so far.
I have looked at the front cross-member location to make sure it is correctly located, looks ok.
I have loosened the universal joints on the column and tapped it home and the rack is fully driven into the U/J but there is still not enough clearance at the bottom mounting holes.
I have removed the column and the rack then fouls the bottom of the timing cover/ sump but it still does not fit correctly and is about ½” out on the 2 mounting holes. ( I could also do with lowering the engine a bit more so this is not an option)
Am I missing anything obvious as I thought this would have been a straight swap?
Could I weld in a new mounting plate and bolt the rack in position and would this affect the steering set up?
Do I need to look at the engine mounts and cut off part of the rack?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you are using a RV8 cross member you will need to use a RV8 rack, but they are unobtainable, there is talk that a MGF one might fit or you could go the MGOC power steering route. You might try VAG at Yeovil as they bought all the crossmember / front suspension parts from Portland Engineering who produced the crossmembers for MG/Rover

I notice from your photo,s that you are using a Rubber Bumper B rack which was made by Camgears, the RV8 rack was made by Supra, but they only manufactured 2050 racks, 2000 for the cars made and the surplus for spare parts .If you can get hold of a second hand RV8 rack (maybe from one of the company's that do P.A.S conversions) and there is play in it ,its not a problem as the downshaft to the rack are shimmed under the plate on top of the rack , if there is play in the 2 steering links ,under the gaiter is a large nut which mates up with the rack itself, these are also shimmed, if you have removed the shims and still get play the way most seem to have done it id turn a couple ( or more ) thou. off the base of the nut.

I'm not familiar at all with this particular setup.
But from looking at the pictures.
Couldn't you just shorten the column and the rack pinion shafts slightly?
It looks like you have enough spline length to get away with it.
Cheers
Fred

Kevin, I installed an RV8 crossmember on my 1976 Rubber Bumper B and ran into a similar situation. On my car the steering rack was only out of alignment by about 1/4 inch and I was able to get it to fit through a combination of loosening all of the bolts, including the column to dash bolts and elongating the mounting holes in the crossmember slightly. It may be a better and safer solution to shorten the shaft or if you are going to open up the holes on the rack mounting tabs, to have some extra reinforcing material welded in, as I understand that those tabs are subject to a considerable amount of stress during cornering.