So my car, 2008 G37s Coupe 6MT, has 120k miles on it, it has been making a humming like noise when I'm taking a sweeping turn on the highway either left or right in the front end. Also when I am in the parking lot and I turn the wheel full lock one way or the other and begin to move there will be a clunk and I can feel the front end jerk. While driving the car will sometime give a slight jerk left or right, nothing crazy. At first I thought that the wheel hub assembly was going bad on both front tires, however when I jacked the front end up and tried to shake the wheel they feel tight and don't move as if it is a bad hub. I crawled under to look at the rack and pinion and there is some leaking coming out of the ends, and around the nut (see picture)

Any masterful minds on here have an idea where I may need to start looking to correct this?

the other side is just as wet and i am losing power steering fluid.

 

Don't worry too much about the seeping around that nut. That nut adjusts the preload, don't mess with it unless you're following the fsm to set it. That's pretty normal, and doesn't look excessive. However, if it's leaking from the boots on both sides you probably need a new rack. The poor steering feel could also be caused by the rack and likely is if it's excessively leaking from the boots.

Before you go too crazy, slide those boots off and see if there's a lot of fluid or just a little seeping. If it's just seeping a bit into the boots you should be alright in the rack.

As for the clunk, get in there and really look at your bushings too. While it's likely you are having a rack issue, it can't hurt to see if the lower or upper control arm bushings are shot
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Thank you for a timely response! LOL

I will get under her and see what I can see under those boots. In the mean time, what options are there for a new rack other than OEM?

 

No problem. I missed the italics that said you're losing fluid. If you're having to add fluid and got a leaky rack, it's definitely rack time!

Unfortunately I cant recommend anything except for the oe Hitachi, it goes for around 750 and includes tie rod ends (you can find it on various places, I bought mine from conceptzperformance).

You can try your luck with rebuilds, some people have great experiences with them; personally, I don't want to do the job twice if the rebuilt needs to be warranty replaced. The rebuilds go for 300-400ish on rockauto. Good luck