'74 FJ40 Steering Box Remove/Replace (1 Viewer)

[Spike Strip]

Howdy MUD,

As always, mission creep ... Started with a Water Pump replacement and while I was there I decided to replace my 45 year old Alternator, just because...

So I bought a NOS Alternator from @ToyotaMatt and had him build a new sub-harness for it as the old one had toasted from being so close to the header. Matt builds a beautiful harness and even covered the new harness wire with some high-temp oven-wire insulation. Perfect. It's a service he offers, but not on his website, yet.

A couple years ago, I had bought a replacement rebuild Steering Box from @65swb45 (Mark's Off Road) and staring at the leaky mess while I was doing the Alternator got me disgusted enough to pull the fender and finally attack the leaky box ....

My questions:

1- Mark gave me some tips on removing the box; something about dropping the steering column or pulling it back? Either way I've since forgotten

2 - Do I need to mark the Pitman Arm? In the pic you can see the yellow paint on Mark's rebuild that surely is steering center. How to align the pitman arm on the new box?

I'm also planning on replacing the TREs, RREs, and draglink while the stuff is apart.

This is a '74 FJ40 USA spec truck with 66K miles. I'm the second owner.

Any other tips for this job ?

Mark A, should you see this, I posted here rather than taking up your shop time so maybe the info can help someone in the future ...

Cheers!

 

[65swb45]

Getting the pitma arm off is the real bear. Clearance from the column is a breeze.

Unbolt the gas pedal, the 3 6mm bolts that hold the column shield to the firewall, loosen the clamp that supports the column under the instrument cluster and remove the two nuts at the coupler. As long as you can get an inch and a half out of the two sub harnesses when you pull up on the wheel, you’re golden.

 

[Skreddy]

I could not get my steering arm off with it bolted to the frame. I ended up undoing the arm from the drag link, removing the box and getting the whole steering box in a vice and a big cheater bar on my big puller. Mine is 1 piece box/column so not much help for a detachment procedure. Reinstalling, I just centered the tires, turned the box to lock one way, counted the turns back the other way and came back half of that number and installed the arm to line up where the drag link was.

 

[Spike Strip]

Pitman arm?

Easy as Sunday Morning with the of pullers ....

(my homage to @Onur 's single-finger salute )