The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Steering Wheel Slop, where do I start

Joe, in case you've never taken one of these steering boxes apart, please let me explain how they adjust just a bit. The sector gear meshes with the ball nut rack and the movement of the nut rack causes the sector gear to move back/forth in a circular fashion. The ball nut rack has 3 teeth which mate with the 5 teeth on the sector shaft. The ball nut teeth are at an angle so that when the sector gear is pushed in (adjusted and pushed further away from the engine) that angle causes these two parts to mate more firmly. The 3rd tooth on the sector gear (which is dead center) meshes tighter than the other 2 on each side of it...the high point. And as respects that sector gear if you pull it outward (move it toward the engine) it gets looser and if you push it inward (away from the engine) it gets tighter. The worm acts like a screw with grooves and ball bearings which mate with the ball nut rack. So when the steering wheel is turned, those balls, the grooves and the ball guides all work to make the movement of the ball nut rack smooth. If you need diagrams of any of this, please let me know.

Thanks for all that information. I will take the, what seems to be much easier route, just as you described, to make the adjustment and see what happens. I do not have that much mechanical experience to go much further. I did replace a bent tie rod some time ago. Truck has original type tie rod ends. It all seemed to go together well with no play in tie rod ends. The only very slight up and down movement was at the king pin and at the pitman arm connection to steering box as mentioned before.

Sounds encouraging, Joe. Any questions just ask. If we don’t know we’ll do our best to make up something interesting. And hopefully humorous.

A little story here... Relevant though. I had a spring on one end of the drag link break. These springs are available for half and 3/4 ton rigs and listed for 1-tons as well as the same part number. They don't fit the 1-ton. Oh, they fit but they're nowhere near as stout as the originals.

Anyhow, I replaced the spring and in the process got the drag link a bit shorter so the steering wheel was no longer centered. It was off by about three inches. I drove it like that for several years until I got tired of the extra slop in the steering gear. The steering gear was/is properly adjusted but because the steering box was not centered it had an annoying amount of additional play/slop that couldn't be adjusted out because the steering gear would bind when it went over dead center. So I just left the adjustment alone.

After I got tired enough of the constant steering correction and had some time to work on it, I removed the drag link and swapped springs around until I got it the right length, with the smaller spring fully compressed, not per the manual. The weaker 1/2 ton spring had to be compressed more or it would compress as I turned the steering wheel. Once I got that done and all greased up, the steering wheel was centered again and didn't need any adjustment. It's much more pleasant to drive now.