I need to get some new seals for my '89 Camaro's steering gear and there are two options for the input and pitman seals: 1) with soft ride suspension, and 2) without soft ride suspension. How do I know whether I have the soft ride suspension? My Camaro is either an RS or a Z28 model: It has a Z28 hood and rocker panel skirts, but RS tail lights and the wrong console box code list for the car (the box or console was apparently swapped out at some point in the car's life). The steering gear itself is about 2 3/4 turns lock to lock and has some indiscernible stamping on the center of the end cap.

Thanks for any help.

 

Looking on Rockauto, seems these seals are pretty inexpensive, If it were me I'd order both and see which one I would need after I've got it apart.

On a side note and correct me if I'm wrong cause I'm not a Camaro guy, I wasn't aware that the Z-28 and RS had different tail lights?

 

The Z28 Has The Grid Style The RS Has The Original Style

 

My plan now is to just go ahead and take the old pitman seals out and take them into the local Carquest, because they say they have one or the other of the pitman seal kits in stock. If it matches that or not then at least I'll know what I'm dealing with. It could be that there isn't any difference between the two sets of pitman seals. I always thought the 3rd gen RS and Z28 Camaros all got the same steering boxes.

I'm leaning towards my car being an RS Camaro, because I believe all 1989 Z28 Camaros Had "IROC Z" on the rocker panel skirts and glovebox door and mine just says "Z28" on the skirts. Also it has the '91-92 hood blisters instead of the IROC louvers suggesting a previous owner took a few parts off of a 91-92 parts cars and put them on this car to try to make it into a Z28, since by then Chevy had dropped the "IROC Z" moniker and went back to calling the Z28's "Z28". Personally I would like to fix it up as one or the other rather than a combination of parts from both models.

 

Dug a little deeper on the Google image search, I see it now