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68 Steering Box

A

AtlantaSteve

Active Member
I recently got a 68 steering box and am a big confused... In the two '66 steering boxes I've had, I could easily grab the steering shaft and turn it and the output shaft would turn.

But on this steering box, grabbing the rag joint and turning it by hand, it won't budge a bit. Is this indicative of a locked up box?

Hoping I won't have to ship it off to stangersite, but it'd probably still be better to do so whether it's locked up or not...just hoping to avoid it.
 
Um.... you're correct, turning the input shaft should be easy and result in the output shaft turning. Something is amiss.
 
Thanks, Dave. I thought something was wrong. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do at this point. The 68 column+Box is a back-burner project for me right now, so I'll probably just plow forward on something else and not get too worked up over it. When I get back to this project, I can have the box looked at.
 
That's a good point, but I have a functioning spear-o-matic in there now, which is fine for now. Unfortunately, it's a dollars and cents decision more than anything else.
 
If you want to look out of curiousity I opened my box from the top, you have to unscrew the locknut but if you're careful you can avoid moving the set screw by holding it still with a large screwdriver and mark it with paint to make sure it didn't move. I opened mine up and scooped all the old worn out original grease out (those gears are sharp, my hands got pretty sliced up so be careful). I then refilled it as much as I could with spec grease, reinstalled the cover and then pumped more in through one of the screw holes.

It really improved the steering, taking the wheel play down from 1" to 1/2" and smoothed it out. You might want to flush it with something (marvel?) before you repack and see if you spot anything jamming it. I drove it like that for ~6mos. before motor tear down and sent it to stanger and waited months but the engine was out anyway and I was stripping th engine bay so no rush for me. It's back and looks like new, one less headache.

Steve I saw MM&F I think did an article on putting the later columns into '65/'66, it was in the last couple months if you didn't get it maybe someone has it to scan for you, I'll have to see if I bought that issue.
Jon
 
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