one-piece manual steering box question '72FJ40 (1 Viewer)

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DSRTRDR

I can mangle anything ...
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Baton Rouge, LA and Fountain Hills, AZ
Because the steering wheel had about 1/4 turn play and everything else is tight, we took the steering box apart and found some sideways play of the rollers as well as play between the rollers and the worm gear. Is there supposed to be some play or should we aim for tightening as much as possible? So far, we have tightened the rollers and took out two of the thick shims of the sector shaft. The latter removed the play between the rollers and worm gear. Right now, we don't have a means to measure whether the rollers are centered, any suggestions? Also, does someone know what the pre-load on the sector shaft should be? Thanks in advance, Claudia
 
If you find this info outside this board please let me know, I plan to go through mine as well.

Thanks
Les
 
Dear Les,

thanks for this very informative link.

We have not taken out the worm gear, and it doesn't look damaged. We tightened the rollers, and will take some shims out. That should do it for me. Cruiserdan said rollers and shims are still available, but the worm gear itself is discontinued. Let me know if you need more information as you get to it, Michael can give you a play-by-play on the dismantle (pulling the pitman arm turned out not to be a problem). Before we went at the steering box, we had taken care of other potential factors, such as put in all new spring and shackle bushings, new shackles, replaced tie rod ends, and by that time, everything was pretty straight and tight except for the play right in the box itself. I plan to get a new rubber boot for the column, mine is shrunken, leaving some open space in the firewall, and that may be quite a source of noise.

The only thing we need to figure out now is how to get the turn signal handle to automatically spring back after each turn (there was some play in that as well, don't know yet where).

So long, maybe I'll see you driving around one of these days.

Claudia
 

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