The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Manual steering box upgrade?

I just installed a 3" drop axle in my 51' 3100.

I want to upgrade the rest of my steering components so as to minimize bump steer and slop.

In terms of the steering box, all im seeing is power steering kits. But i want manual steering, not ps.

Is there an upgraded manual box?

What kind of upgrade are you looking for?

Bump steer is function of suspension/steering geometry, a typical steering box change (power or not) won't impact that.

As far as slop goes, the first thing to do is identify the source. Is it your tie rods, pitman arm, kingpins, the steering gear inside the box?

Once you find the slop, replace/rebuild the sloppy parts.

I dont know how i can be more clear.

Like Fibonachu said, the only real upgrade to a steering box is ensuring that it's operating correctly. You can upgrade it by replacement with a correctly working steering box (even of the same configuration) or rebuild the one you have. Your choice.

If your goal is to fix the bump steer, then the solution is to fix your steering geometry.

Bump steer is caused by the suspension movement resulting in changes to the pitman arm/spindle relationship. As designed by the factory, the drag link is level at the normal ride height and the length correlates to the circle that the axle moves in when the spring compresses. As the suspension moves, the axle and drag link end move in the same arc and bump steer is minimized.

By adding a drop axle (presumably without changing anything else? Correct me if I am wrong?) you have thrown that alignment out of whack. The drag link is now aimed up at normal ride height, so as the suspension travels, the spindle end of the drag link moves in a different arc than the axle, causing steering angle changes.

The best way to fix it is to get rid of the drop axle that caused the geometry to be out of whack.

Assuming that is not an option, there are a few other choices:

1. Some people swear by offset drag links to reduce the angular change but I have not seen that work personally and from a mathmatics standpoint it doesn't make sense that it would help.

2. Get a different length pitman arm that realigns the steering components. This is pretty popular with lift kits and works reasonably well, but for a lowering kit the pitman arm would need to be shortened and that will affect your steering rate and potentially limit your steering angle.

3. Move the whole steering box up by the same 3" as your drop axle moved the spindle. This would be the most effective, but is *much* more difficult and complicated than it sounds. Raising it by 3" would have the output shaft right at (maybe passing through) the top of the frame. It would also require either raising the whole steering column (which would require clearancing the bottom of the dash) or putting in an aftermarket column with a u-joint to change the angle of the column for the new box location.

None of these are really great solutions. Converting to power steering moves the steering box to the front of the axle and lets you pick the mounting height to be correct for your geometry. It already requires an aftermarket column and/or custom u-joint/jump shaft work, so it handles most of the issues with option 3.

I have seen people put in a power steering box to get the mounts and geometry of the newer parts, but just filled it with hydraulic fluid and looped the inlet and the outlet together so it pushes fluid back and forth and is effectively a manual box. That might work for you, but getting it set up correctly is non-trivial.

Thinking about where the pitman arm ends up relative to the frame with the power steering boxes, a 3" drop might still leave you with the drag link needing to pass through the frame.

There really isn't a good off-the-shelf solution.

As far as "upgrading" a stock steering gear, Lares will rebuild a steering gear in stock configuration - say 4 revolutions lock to lock- or they will build it to a tighter ratio of 2 revolutions lock to lock.

Drag links are what are supposed to be level with the ground, not pitman arms.

Ed

Thanks for pointing that out. I used pitman arm in some places correctly and others incorrectly. I believe the edits are correct now.