hey, '03 z33 here. replaced LCA's/ball joints yesterday. noticed new slop in steering afterwards, its really bad at low speeds. What wound up being your issue? thanks in advance

 

Make sure the conical compression fittings on the LCA ball joint shafts are the correct/same size as the originals (should fit nice and tight in the LCA). There are different sizes depending on the year. That can create major slop if you don't catch it.
-Icer

 

hey icer, thanks for the quick reply. i can confirm that the tapered cone is in fact for the '03 geometry and my ball joints are perfectly secure/flush as well as torqued to spec. I'm leaning towards bad tie rods, just wanted to check with OP to see if maybe there was a simple step to try before dropping the money on OEM tie rods, that's all. Looking down the barrel of about $1300 total to fix what i initially thought was just gonna be ball joints; lucky for me I have friends who don't mind offering me labor in exchange for beer rather than money lol.

also, worth mentioning the new behavior i'm experiencing is in line with bad tie rods (pulling past x degrees of turning in either direction at low speeds rather than returning to center + some initial looseness below 30mph-ish). Will report back in a couple weeks after the new tie rods are installed to confirm whether or not it fixed my problem.

 

Yep. Could be tie rods. Should be easy to check with the wheel tug test (front end jacked up, wheel locked).

Been a while since I checked the steering rack mounting system. But most cars have rubber bushings for the rack mounts. If those bushings get trashed from oil leaks or simply age, that can also create a lot of slop.

Not sure if OP will respond. Thread is very old.
Good luck!
-Icer