manual steering gear box - oil or grease? (1 Viewer)

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When I rebuilt my 77 box, I used 90wt like the book said and it has been fine. FWIW, I am currently resotoring a 1930 model A pickup. The steering box calls for a very heavy oil called 600w. I dont think it is actually 600Wt but more like 200. Some folks use John Deer Cornhead grease in their boxes to keep them from leaking. I had never heard of it, but it is between oil and grease. Some trivia on a slow day.

 
When I bought my 1975 FJ 40 in the early 80's the manual box was leaking a quart of gear oil every fill up at the gas station. I bought a seal, the first thing I bought from SOR. Cost me $20 in freight for a $2 seal! Any how my neighbor and I tried for 5 hours with a puller and torch to get the pitman arm off no luck. So we pumped 2 tubes of grease into the box and to this day the grease is still in and never had a problem. Over the years I've checked the grease level and never added another squirt of grease. Now if I were in a climate where it gets below zero, I might be concerned. Here in NC, even in 20 degrees and snow over the years never had a problem. Just my $.02
 
I just rebuilt mine in my 71; it was full of what looked like molasses. I put 90 wt in. My FSM does say if it leaks oil, fill with grease instead of rebuilding. Or something like that.
 
20 years ago, I flushed out all the grease from the PO, did a seal job and put gear oil in it. About 10 years later it began a minor weep. Today, it weeps just the right amount. No drips make it to the ground but the frame in that area has zero rust. :D
 
germaneighter said:
This is an older post but I just recently went through my '77 manual steering box, cleaning and inspecting every piece, including the (68) reciprocating ball bearings. Maybe Toyota used gear lube instead of grease due to the reciprocating balls travelling through the worm gear, rack block, and ball return "tubes". My gut feel is that grease would not make this trip sufficiently to keep everything lubricated adequately in the ball path. I couldn't find a good diagram of the Toyota box so I've included a pic of a Saginaw box that is very similar. (The bearings on the worm gear are adjustable with a threaded ring instead of the shims Toyota uses but otherwise it's the same.) I don't think the Toyota design is all it could be for keeping gear lube from leaking. No seal under adjustment lock nut coupled with metal pre-load shims under the worm gear cover plate. I used a very small amount of Indian Head sealer on the sector shaft cover gasket and intend to put a seal-type washer under adjuster lock nut but thought sealer on the shims would throw off the pre-load. I'll probably run gear lube and see how it does. If it leaks I'll probably cram it full of grease.
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germaneighter said:
This is an older post but I just recently went through my '77 manual steering box, cleaning and inspecting every piece, including the (68) reciprocating ball bearings. Maybe Toyota used gear lube instead of grease due to the reciprocating balls travelling through the worm gear, rack block, and ball return "tubes". My gut feel is that grease would not make this trip sufficiently to keep everything lubricated adequately in the ball path. I couldn't find a good diagram of the Toyota box so I've included a pic of a Saginaw box that is very similar. (The bearings on the worm gear are adjustable with a threaded ring instead of the shims Toyota uses but otherwise it's the same.) I don't think the Toyota design is all it could be for keeping gear lube from leaking. No seal under adjustment lock nut coupled with metal pre-load shims under the worm gear cover plate. I used a very small amount of Indian Head sealer on the sector shaft cover gasket and intend to put a seal-type washer under adjuster lock nut but thought sealer on the shims would throw off the pre-load. I'll probably run gear lube and see how it does. If it leaks I'll probably cram it full of grease.

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I just replaced a steering gear box in my 68 f 250 and am using a mix of 80w90 gear oil with white lithium grease .It it helps the mix flow and cling to the gears and with the temp. No leaks yet

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I'm no scientist, but if I am not wrong here; I was taught good science is observable science. Any one can come up with any hypothesis, but to prove it you need good tests, and time to conclude your findings. Without good observation, you cant come up with a good conclusion. And if my reading of this topic serves me correct here, it looks like we have plenty of time, and tests done with multiple good observations to conclude that grease is in fact good enough for the fj40 steering gearbox. Well at least for the life span of the average fj40. My .02 cents, don't need a Japanese engineer to rewrite my fj40 manual on this topic any longer. My opinion is set, Grease is good enough. Hey, by golly; maybe even better, but on that note, that one I'll leave alone.
 
While I don't show up very often here, I am very active on a site called 'fordbarn' a group of '30s-'40s guys. (who tend to be in their 80s). The John Deere cornhead grease has been found to be the best product for both proper lubrication and staying put. Some of the guys on that forum were involved in lubrication as a career and have stated that grease does not provide the type of lubrication required in a low speed gearbox. If you didn't watch the video, I would encourage you to do so. I get it on amazon.
 
Many times these decisions are made for ease of manufacturing rather than optimizing on technical or performance grounds. This could be as simple as "the guy on the assembly line is already filling the trans and t-case with a gear oil from a giant barrel, we can have him put that in the manual steering box too." Auto manufacturers do things all the time that are not the technically best solution, but save enough money or have some other convenience type benefit to justify the compromise. When I did my internship at Toyota Motor Sales in the Quality department (back when they were in Torrance) a lot of it was evaluating these types of considerations with respect to suppliers and weighing what was acceptable vs added cost.

Since then I've designed worm gear boxes (single and double enveloping,) ball screws and recently developed equipment with cycloidal gearboxes (from Japan) - which also have the grease vs oil question come up. The heat, speed, orientation considerations there dwarf what we are looking at with a manual steering box. Just don't run it dry.
 
I don't think I have ever dealt with a manual steering box filled with grease at -20F I'd be curious to see how it felt. I don't think I have any manual steering FJ40s around here these days. Not that run and move anyway.

Mark...
 
See post #11

An inconvenient truth for those who lack the ability to seal the box well enough to hold oil.
 
FWIW, the robots that are used to build Toyota vehicles often use modern greases in gearbox applications with tighter tolerances, higher loads and near constant duty cycles. Grease is common in ball screw linear actuators, again higher loads and speed. Worm gears use oil or grease depending on application as well as for service and cooling considerations. Rod ends and the center arm get grease. People can postulate this vs that, but either should be fine in a simple steering box turned by hand at a relatively low RPM.

Having a full 3 on the tree column I will be putting grease in it after I change the output seal because disassembly of the one piece input shaft boxes is a PITA.
 
Having my box completely disassembled (1 year ago) and seeing how all the parts move, my thoughts are, grease doesn’t flow, but gear oil does.
A little bit of grease was useful holding the balls in place for re-assembly, but once back together, I prefer my ball swimming in oil.
After filling with gear oil and cycling the shaft back & forth many times, I drained & refilled to get that bit of grease out of there.

SteeringBalls 2.jpg
 
You gotta have a lotta balls to rebuild a steering box like that.
 
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