Power Steering Gearbox Reseal (3 Viewers)

[ufg8r]

So, hopefully this is useful! I had the thought to write this up when I was determining how to fix a leak and spent some time searching before I found everything kind of spread around mud in various places. This is more a consolidation of info rather than something new.

I had a seal go bad on my gearbox and the leak finally got bad enough that I had to figure out how to fix it. At first, I thought I’d just replace the offending seal, so I went to our local dealership to get it and found out it is no longer available from Toyota. Turning to mud, I posted about the part number for the worm shaft seal given to me by the dealer to verify its accuracy. I got more than I bargained for when I put the comment up and learned a number of useful things.

First, almost all of the gearbox parts required for a rebuild or reseal are no longer available from Toyota. Individual seals and seal kits are available from a number of aftermarket suppliers though. I ended up ordering a kit from Rockauto.

Second, if there is not a lot of bearing wear or play in the box you can consider a reseal, otherwise you may need to find a remanufactured replacement. It’s probably best to reseal the entire thing rather than just the one seal that presented the problem. There are places that can do a reseal for you if you remove the gearbox and ship it off, a commonly used one is West Texas Off Road but I think there are other options. However, the reseal job didn’t look too bad to me so I figured I’d give it a shot.

Third, there aren’t a lot of threads on resealing the FJ60 gearbox, the best I found was from @Mace here: FJ60 hydro assist porting... The point of that thread was about adding ports for hydraulic assist steering, but it covers the essentials of teardown and resealing.

Finally, I found out that if you need to replace the gearbox early-year gearboxes have a different bolt pattern where they mount to the frame, but somewhere around 1984/1985 Toyota switched to a mounting pattern that is common to the 60, 62, and all years of the 80 series.

Here are a couple other threads I found useful and I’ll document my reseal as well.

FJ60 PS Box Rebuild - Land Cruiser Tech from IH8MUD.com

Power Steering Gear Box Removal and Installation

 

[ufg8r]

Getting the box off the rig was relatively straightforward, but a little bit of a mess, so have shop towels nearby. Seems like most of the questions I read on this part have to do with keeping everything aligned for when you reassemble. For the pitman arm, there are factory match marks (see pic) so no need to add your own. In the intermediate steering shaft there is a notch for the bolt that couples the ujoint to the gear box worm shaft, so you can go without one there as well. Of course, if it makes you feel better to add them it doesn’t hurt.

 

[ufg8r]

Next was to clean off the muck and atf and then remove the pitman arm. I used a 32-mm socket on an impact wrench to remove the nut. From there I used a pitman arm puller to get the arm off. Even with the puller it took some convincing. I applied some force with the puller but got to the point where I couldn’t turn the puller any further, so I left the puller loaded up and with a couple downward whacks on the arm with a rubber mallet I got the arm off.

 

[ufg8r]

From there I was following the factory service manual to take off the top cap, remove the sector shaft, and then the worm shaft. The FSM indicates SSTs are required to remove the lock nut and adjusting screw, but I was able to carefully remove the lock nut with a set of channel lock pliers. The screw came out with the nut, so I’ll have to see later what I can do to separate them, if necessary.

One thing that was a little confusing in the FSM (but not in Mace’s thread) was on taking the worm shaft out. The FSM makes it sound like you can just pull the worm shaft out after removing the adjusting screw, but you actually have to take out the four bolts in the housing behind the screw before you can pull the shaft.

Regarding the worm shaft, don’t turn it out of the piston (another thing that was a little confusing in the FSM). I did on accident, so I’ve got 44 loose bearings I’ll need to put back into the worm, which is ordinarily not required for the reseal. EDIT: There was in fact an oring and seal that required removal of the worm. See posts below. My suggestion if you accidently do this is to not try to turn the shaft back in, you risk jamming bearings up in the worm and causing some damage. So just don’t lose the bearings and fix it later. I set up a towel on my workbench so if I dropped a bearing it wouldn’t roll away.

At this point I have it all apart and I’m waiting on my seal kit to get here before I can finish, hopefully next weekend.

Cheers!

- Chris

 

[dbleon]

Whoa

 

[ufg8r]

Got the seal kit in. Made by Gates in Denver, CO. Price was about $26 plus shipping. If the heat doesn't chase me out of the garage tomorrow hopefully I can put some time towards putting things back together.

The kit has a pretty good diagram of where the seals go.

 

[micruz60]

Nominated for a sticky thread!

 

[ufg8r]

Got just a little time in this morning. These picks have been helpful getting the old orings out. I kind of started from the outside in with the top cap and then moved to the input shaft seal and then the housing with the 4 bolts. Used a 19-mm socket to drive the input shaft seal out.

 

[ufg8r]

On the housing there is a seal for the input shaft bearing adjusting cap...

I also learned there is a seal and oring that requires the worm be removed. This one is also a little annoying to replace because the oring and seal go into the housing together. I got them back in by first putting in the oring and then putting in the seal.

Last one on this housing was a large oring on the other side. There are three orings of about this size in my kit. Two thinner ones and one thicker one. I used the think one here.

Here are an old thin one one the left and a thick one on the right. A subtle difference I missed at first.

 

[LAMBCRUSHER]

 

[doug720]

Nice work and write up.

 

[micruz60]

Just out of curiosity...
In the FSM, on page SR3, and on page SR22 there is mention of gear oil check, a breather? And in the picture, on SR22 next to the adjust screw, on the top there is what appears to be this gear oil plug?

 

[ufg8r]

Thanks all, glad to see this is looking like useful info.

Just out of curiosity...
In the FSM, on page SR3, and on page SR22 there is mention of gear oil check, a breather? And in the picture, on SR22 next to the adjust screw, on the top there is what appears to be this gear oil plug?

Yeah, that had me scratching my head too. My gearbox doesn't look like the drawings you mention and I wonder if it's because the FSM covers some of the other land cruiser models of this era? Maybe these features show up in the 70, 73, and 75s in FJ, BJ, and HJ variety?

 

[ufg8r]

The FSM images referenced and pics of my gearbox top cover and top of the housing....

 

[micruz60]

Yeah, my forty has a fill plug, but it is a completely different design.
So you have to fill it with gear oil before putting the top back on?
Guessing on that...

Thanks for posting the pics from the FSM

 

[ufg8r]

Had a little more time tonight and got the seals on the worm shaft and the piston. There is an oring under the seal on the piston.

Next I moved to the bottom of the housing and took out the sector shaft dust seal. There is a c-clip behind it that is being stubborn, so stopping for today. Will let it sit with some penetrant on it overnight and will try again later.

Got some more cleaning to do on this end apparently....

 

[Michael B]

Good work Chris!

 

[Spike Strip]

@Rigger @Mace

STICKY, please ...

 

[NeverGiveUpYota]

Had a little more time tonight and got the seals on the worm shaft and the piston. There is an oring under the seal on the piston.

View attachment 1312548


View attachment 1312549

Next I moved to the bottom of the housing and took out the sector shaft dust seal. There is a c-clip behind it that is being stubborn, so stopping for today. Will let it sit with some penetrant on it overnight and will try again later.


View attachment 1312550

View attachment 1312552

Got some more cleaning to do on this end apparently....

I rebuilt mine a few months back.... I was so annoyed at a garage for the absurd quote for a reman'd one at $617 that I bought a kit and did it myself at my kitchen table in a few days time. I posted a thread up but at the time my desktop would not let me upload pixs here on mud so I had nothing for response. I did tho share on the tlca fb page. I am commenting only because I see the control valve sealing rings (two white and green speckled) are the same ones I ditched because they were way loose.. I contacted toyota and had them order the oem rings at a price of $11.25 ea (plus a few coins possibly) and they fit much better. Just a heads up. I also did not take the entire pittman arm off of my truck but just got it loose from the output shaft. I used the sledge method and got it free by alternating pulling with a puller and hitting with a sledge.

 

[ufg8r]

I am commenting only because I see the control valve sealing rings (two white and green speckled) are the same ones I ditched because they were way loose.. I contacted toyota and had them order the oem rings at a price of $11.25 ea (plus a few coins possibly) and they fit much better.

Thanks for mentioning this. In one of the threads I linked in the original post someone else noted the same thing. And these same seals are loose for me too. Seems to show up consistently with these seal kits. I'll try to write up anything I do to address it when I get around to reassembling the gear box. Good to know these seals are still available from Toyota.

Good work Chris!

Thanks, have to have something to do with all the time I saved by not writing our club newsletter!