Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Taisuke Nakamura

Nobuo Kobayashi

Takahiro Iwase

Shigetoshi Miyoshi

Shigeo Aiba

Takeshi Onogi

Tsutomu Sugiura

The synthetic resin rack guide to be housed in a gear box of a rack and pinion type steering device for a vehicle. The rack guide includes a generally semi-cylindrical head, an outer cylinder and an inner cylinder. The generally semi-cylindrical head includes a semi-cylindrical concave surface which slidably contacts a back surface of a rack bar. The outer cylinder is separated from the inner cylinder by a circumferentially extending space and is divided into a plurality of sections in the circumferential direction by a plurality of slits which extend in parallel with an axis of the rack guide. Due to the provision of the slits, the outer cylinder can shrink radially inward when it is inserted into a rack housing with no clearance between them and when an interference between them is increased in proportion to an increase in ambient temperature. Thus, a locking of the rack guide with the rack housing is prevented and a smooth sliding is obtained even with the increase in ambient temperature.

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Okazaki, Japan

Taisuke Nakamura