Cutting down the steering rack

Here are some pictures of cutting 5.5" off the Miata steering rack and welding the parts back together. This is not the preferred way to to shorten a rack, but it is the cheapest. The quality of the welding is vital to say the least!

These are the shortened pieces:

These are the parts that were removed- I used a cheap compound miter saw with a 10" abrasive blade:

Here is the assembled rack. Part alignment was handled by strapping the parts to angle iron while welding and the end result was pretty good. Everything is straight!