The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline 1951 steering box rebuild

I decided to rebuild my steering box (Bearings and bushings) and have it off the truck and mostly disassembled but cant get the steering shaft out of the tube and I cant see how its connected to the worm gear. While I,m rebuilding the box I want to replace the upper steering column bearing.
Can anyone give me some guidance on this procedure ?
Thanks, John

The shaft is welded to the worm. If you take the four bolts out the mast jacket will slid off
the shaft. Here are some random pictures of the rebuild of a 1950 unit which is the same
as yours:
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/steering&page=all

I thought there was an online overhaul manual for the truck steering gear but I can't find it
now. They are available from any one of the vendors for a couple of bucks and they could
have it to you before Christmas probably.

DG

As usual, nice pictures, Denny.

Here is an automobile manual on-line, but I also could not find a 47-55 truck one on-line. I thought that I bought a manual several years ago, but I cannot now find one listed by the normal sellers.

Did you post a write-up of your overhaul experience? I have to decide if I might be able to undertake this (I have no machine tools), or decide if I should have JC or Chevs of 40s do it (JC has a 10% off sale now).

Thank for any advice you offer.

Here is all the information needed to do the job. 51 shop manual

Tim

Tim,

I have read the Shop Manual but am interested in hearing about unforeseen problems that might need machine work done. It looks like Denny did some machine work (I cannot tell from the photo-log).

Did you do a "re-build"? Was the Shop Manual sufficient?

Thanks,

Why in the world any vendor thinks they are going to improve their business by
SCREWING up their catalog so badly that you can't find anything in it is beyond me.
I haven't bought anything from JC since they've changed their online catalog but
boy,,,,,,,,is it screwed up!!!!!!!!
I just spent 20 minutes punching in “steering” and “books” and “manual” in as many
different combinations as is possible and got no hits at all on their site, in other words, it‘s
impossible to search the site with their new catalog. Wow whiz kid,,,,,, what a great
improvement!!!
I’m sure I got the Truck steering gear overhaul manual from them several years ago.

Anyway, the booklet is listed in Chevs of the 40’s catalog for six bucks as SHOP54S.
It’s more complete than the information in the standard shop manual.

DG

Just to add my take on this, I ordered the rebuild kit from Jim Carter and it came with an instruction manual. I read through the instructions and thought that maybe it was more than I cared to take on, but I've got a buddy that has done a couple of rebuilds and told me he'd bail me out if I had trouble. Turned out to be much easier than I thought, no problems. The only gripe I had was the manual that came with kit had nothing about the bushing replacement but my shop manual filled in the gaps. The toughest part for me was like all things on a 55+ year old truck, getting the bolts loose to remove the gearbox.

Here's a link to the truck steering gear overhaul booklet which has more detail/pictures than the shop manual.

http://chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com/booklets/5220mtsindex.htm

Thorough cleaning, lubrication, and adjustment as per these instructions will make it work like new.

Great Curt, I thought it was archive there somewhere. And yep, it should be in the kit maybe that's where mine came from cuz I'm sure I got it from JC.

DG

WOW !! a lot of great information from everyone. thanks to all.
I have my parts ordered. I may have more questions during the rebuild but it looks pretty straight forward.
Thanks again

John

I did do the rebuild,I used the book curt b linked to.I posted that same link in a thread somewhere.I had the link also,but couldn't find it.I was thinking I got it from the old online Chevy manuals project. old car manualsYep it's on the online old car manual site. steering gear

I didn't have any unforeseen problems.

Tim

If you want to download the whole manual as a PDF, here is a link to the file on my server:

chevy truck steering box repair manual


Enjoy,

Kurt

Hey that's great Kurt, thanks a lot.

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Thank you, everyone.

I'll be giving this try - I hope this winter, while my trucks are in hibernation. I have three steering columns to mess with (to get one good one).

The manual shows special tools for bearing race and bushing removal and installation...has anyone rebuilt theirs without these tools available?

These special tool can usually be replaced by generic tool, punches, pieces of pipe, old bearing races or other stuff you might have laying around.

If you are really stuck, You could take it to a machine shop.

Kurt

Here is page 30 of the booklet which shows scale J-544-A used to obtain 1 -1 ½ pounds of pull to keep the wheel in motion as set by the worm bearing adjuster. I’m sure I’m not the first one who figured I could simulate this tension using my finger/arm as I had no scale around. The result was that the truck would not steer itself out of turns like before and had to be “helped” back to center. This is pretty annoying and will prompt one the get a tool that will allow for reasonably close adjustment.

I have successfully use a small-fish scale for the tool/measurement. I got it a Walmart years ago.

Maybe a luggage scale would also do the job.

Here is another hanging scale.

I borrowed my neighbors fish scale,worked out nice.

0-15 lbs

Tim

You can always rig up a little pulley and run a wire or string from the wheel, over the pulley and then hang a weight off of it to get whatever force you want. This will only be real accurate when the sting is level and tangent to the wheel

Kurt