About Me

Wellington, CO
I'm a regular guy that has a weakness for collecting cars. It's not my fault that they follow me home.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Power steering (mostly) done

So my parts arrived for the Toyota power steering conversion, and I actually had a day off to work on it. 1st off, I'll say that the bracket that mounts the box to the frame is one heavy SOB, probably 1.5" thick steel. The 1st thing you have to do is mount the bracket to the box, which is a lot harder than it sounds. It's only 4 bolts, but the 2 at the bottom of the bracket were a pain. A socket wouldn't fit, and an open end wrench was too wide and a box end was too thick. So I made a tool by grinding an 11/16" box end wrench down pretty darn thin. I put it on and ran it tight with my impact. I was feeling pretty good...until I realized that with everything tightened up, there's no room to get the wrench off since the bolt sticking through is too close to the bracket. No problem, I loosened up the nut and got the wrench off. Then I cut a small pie shaped piece out of the box end so i could slip it off the bolt after everything was tight. It looked kind of like a skinny flare wrench by the time I was finished. Not the prettiest specialty tool made, but very effective. Once I got done with that, I had about an 1/8" off the box that hung over the mounting bracket. Hit it with the grinder and took it down flush, this will enable me to mount the box flush against the frame.

To install the box on the frame I need to do a couple more things. I decided to replace the Pitman arm seal on the steering box. When I pulled the old Toyota arm off, I had to use a little heat on it so I was a little concerned that I may have melted the seal a little bit. Plus, who knows how old the original was? So I dug out the old seal and went to get it replaced. Ordered one at NAPA, but the one they showed me wasn't the same as the one I took out so I didn't buy it. Still need to find the right one and put it in. Paint the box and bracket and I'm in business. I'll take some pictures of everything if I get another chance to work on it soon.

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