Steering Linkage Find

Yesterday I had a free morning and spent it at the junk yard trying to solve my missing steering linkage issue. This particular yard had 4 BMWs which wasn't very promising as 2 of them were e36 3 series. Since that's what the donor was I knew these weren't going to provide anything of great use. The other 2 were an '85 5 series and an '86 6 series. Both of these have extendible columns with independent u-joints. The only question was whether or not the splines would match up to those from my '92 donor.

After an hour at the first car with no luck getting the u-joint out I almost gave up and went home empty handed. Then a breakthrough. I ended up pulling the back end of the steering rack off and out of the car, then prying the u-joint free on the ground. This was much easier than trying to work a crowbar inside a packed hood. Then the moment of truth... were the splines going to match up? They did! On to #2. With this newly found trick of disassembling the rack, 15 minutes later and I had the second one out. At $15 each, I'd say this was both successful and locost. Oh, and icing on the cake was a $4 set of spark plug wires that I needed.