The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Draining lube from steering box

What is the most accepted way to drain the steering box... remove the large end-play adjustment screw??

It depends on what is in there. If someone put axle grease in there, you can use a big screwdriver and painstakingly pull out as much out through the fill hole the best that you can. It's a matter of dipping the screwdriver in and move it around until it is covered with grease, pull it out, wipe it off, "wash/rinse/repeat", and then fill it with Cornhead grease.
There will still be some axle grease in there, but it will mix nicely with the Cornhead grease and work fine.
I have just added some 90 weight oil to the axle grease in one to buy some time until I had time to rebuild the steering box. That helped.

Will use "cotton picker spindle grease"... same stuff.

You will need to readjust it no matter how you take it apart, so either the side cover or the bottom will work. It would really be best to pull the unit out of the truck and clean it correctly if it's really gummed up, then you could replace the seal and worn bushings if need be. I would fill it with solvent, unhook the pitman arm and turn it lock to lock a bunch to wash the insides, then pull one of the caps to drain if I didn't pull it from the truck. Repeat several times if needed. If it's not terrible looking when checking it with screwdriver or stick, just add some 50/50 grease/gear oil mixture and go.

Maintenance Manual warns against running hard against the limits. Just take it easy.

What Bill said. Once you "unhook the pitman arm", there will be no "lock to lock."
If you go too far you will severely damage the ends of the ball bearing guides.

Yeah, I've been studying the book like this is a final exam. Want to know everything I can about this box before I do this.

Please don't even bump "lock to lock" or "end to end" (of turning sweep, that is). It is easy to mess the ball bearing guides up if you do. For what it is worth, I mix corn head grease and 90 weight oil into a slurry and use that. In cold weather even corn head grease can stiffen and you don't want any channeling of the grease at all. I've taken some boxes apart which were run using what appeared to be common chassis grease and it pretty well ruined them.

I had good experience filing it with diesel, and let it sit over night.
Drain it all out, and than rinse with diesel a few times more.

How good that works probably depends on what kind of grease you have in there though.
And yeah - it needs to be out of the truck of course.

Frank

The grease inside looked good. Just not enough. Used 00 spindle grease to fill within a half-inch of the top. 21 degrees last night and the 00 was still able to be poured through a funnel into a squeeze container. Drove it around the block (about 20 miles) to get it mixed up and checked it again.