Power steering?

[Shayne]

Replacing the seals easy enough then were it not for the fight to get it off ?

 

[chapel303]

Ye mate simple job to be honest. The main one is watching the Teflon rings don’t get buggered when reinstalling. Had to get a replacement out for mine when I snapped one.

 

[Soutie]

This was a brilliant thread, thank you very much for sharing!

 

[chapel303]

Alright guys, been away for a while and the 80 has been on ice. Finally managed to put a shift in and get the PS box back in after rebuilding it but seem to have hit some snags.

When I was removing the box I couldn’t get the steering shaft off the box, 3 of us tried for ages and ended up taking it off in the cab and feeding it out still attached to the box. Took it to a local garage to remove the shaft and pitman arm and they removed the wrong portion and damaged one of the high pressure return hose ports on the box which has since caused additional dramas.

Long story short, it’s back on, I did my best to centre the box manually, but I’ve clearly done something wrong as I can’t get to full lock on the right. I’ve either not centred the box correctly, it was like 2.25 full rotations to get to half way but that’s a best guess, or the wheels weren’t straight when I attached the pitman arm or something along those lines.

Anyone have any thoughts? Tempted to just throw it at a garage, it’s steering, don’t want to find out my diy hasn’t worked at 60mph.

It was an epic to put the box on, attach the steering shaft to the wheel and the box and maintain alignment all while solo, so it could have easily shifted position while I was trying to dissect my eyeballs to be in 4 places at once.

 

[chapel303]

But replacing seals etc is straight forward, if it weren’t for the damage done by the garage I used to remove bits, and the fact that I snap about 2x as many bolts on every job due to everything being seized compared to both my mates 80s, it is perfectly doable on the driveway. Would I do it again? No.

 

[frank rabbets]

I think a visit to the factory workshop manual is needed.

 

[chapel303]

Haynes doesn’t have anything of value ref steering box, which is what I and all my mates have and had at the start of this. However, I agree with you and when this issue arose yesterday I went on a big old hunt to find something more in depth and found the 1000 odd page ones stashed away in the archives of ih8mud. I’m going through it currently but figured it doesn’t hurt to ask the forum.

 

[chapel303]

So I reckon remove the drag link from the pitman arm with wheels straight. Get the box to centre with steering wheel by locking left and right and counting back to centre, ignore steering wheel orientation at this point (unless someone tells me otherwise?) then pitman arm back onto drag link (hopefully) and test right hand lock. Adjust steering wheel as required to bring it central. It was always off, even before this nonsense.

That should work..? Thoughts?

 

[frank rabbets]

I assume your box is the type that when you turn the input shaft it will turn forever and the output shaft will turn forever? IE the pitman arm does not need to timed to the box. If so your solution should work.