<VV> Steering Box Replacement

[Tim Verthein]

You might remember earlier discussions about my "crunchy steering" and
"occasional looseness" that I've suffered with my '64 this past
cruising season. Discussion pointed toward steering box troubles.

Well, let me just say, that steering box replacement is pretty easy.
Especially when your son does it for you!  He and a friend did the job
in about two hours.  This included cleaning the garage enough to roll
his '65 out, and drive mine in, and getting the front end up as high as
my jackstands would go.  Near as I can tell from my observatory
position, they pretty much did exactly what the book said, with minimal
complications. Pulled the steering wheel and the left horn, removed
pitman arm from the box, took out three bolts, and that was it. The
only hitch I noted was when they were replacing the steering wheel..and
I noticed a spring and plastic sleeve sitting in the back window behind
the driver, that had apparently rocketed itself there when they removed
it..and they had to pull the wheel and put it where it went.

The old box shaft turns pretty good..untill you get to the horribly
crunchy spots.  And the threaded end where the steering wheel goes had
about 3/4 inch area in the center of the threaded part where the
threads were completely chewed off. A previous owner had put a metal
spacer on the shaft inside the steering wheel where the nuts goes, so
when tightened the nut didn't travel down to the stripped area!

Final analasys? It wasn't a huge pain in the butt from what I could
see. And it made a WORLD of difference! Since I've had the car the
steering has never been this smooth and easy turning. It's almost like
moving from old manual steering to power steering (yes, the old box was
hard to turn..very hard in fact but I didn't know the difference). No
more crunching sounds, mysterious loud "crack" sounds, or spontaneous
wandering.  Definitly worth the three hundred bucks. I guess I'll get
$95 of that back for the core when I send the old one back to
Clarks..assuming the internal crunchiness and stripped threads on the
end of the shaft don't disqualify me!

Oh..you might wonder how I talked Ryan into doing the job? As you
probably know his car is getting very close to being a car and he needs
a battery. Told him if he helped put in my steering box I'd buy him a
battery, next thing I knew he and his friend had the job half done! And
besides, he's been working on his car constantly for about 10 days and
he's already permanently dirty! I imagine he may have a more detailed
report on the actual job, so stay tuned.

Tim Verthein
Beautiful downtown Bovey, MN
Population 637 and no stoplights.

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You *can* repair a flip-flop with a capacitor!
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