steering box rebuild

3

31 A4door

Senior Member
My box needs work. The sector shaft of it is very loose. Talking with my new buddy last night he said he replaced his with a needle bearing and a modern seal outside of that. I like both ideas as I will do my own machine work. Mine doesn't seem to have slop at the gear just the bushing.

Does anyone have the diameters of the stock shaft and maybe the OD of the original bushing handy ? Then I can look into either bushings or needle bearing today.
 
Think it uses a std. OD bushing ? Don't have mine apart yet. Doesn't say anything about OD of the bushing does it ?

Thank you for helping.
 
31 A4door said:
Think it uses a std. OD bushing ? Don't have mine apart yet. Doesn't say anything about OD of the bushing does it ?

Thank you for helping.
Click to expand...
I have Les Andrews books you can view. Also you are welcome to get measurements from my old sector housing. It was not as badly worn as yours is.
 
Les gives the orignal size and says replace the shaft if less than 1.123. Marco gives various sizes to turn it down to in order to use the bearings he lists.
 
I have a new bushing and orig. housing in my hand.
Bushing OD= 1.253+
Bushing ID = 1.126+
Length is 1.5 ...you need 2.
Housing bore ID = 1.25

Dissassembly of your housing will undoubtedly present further surprises &
unless it's been previously rebuilt you'll find wear on everything.
Be sure to study the rebuild/setup info in the Ford Service Bulletins and have a good look at the cone bearings and worm tapers.
I installed the needle brgs and shaft seal, cut an o-ring groove(after it leaked upon re-assembly) & also replaced sector, both cup bearings & cones because they were pitted.
With a home lathe and basic tools it's do-able....but I wouldn't order anything till it's apart and measured.
As with ALL things this old ...the job took over 4 times longer than I expected, but was worth it in the end. Good luck:)
PS...in retrospect I wouldn't hesitate to use bushings next time.
For the carefull milage we put on these heaps, a bushing should last a lifetime.
 
If you are able to do the machine work, why not use a bushing rather than the bearing ? I have heard that some of those bushings are the wrong size though, ID too large.
 
Here is my page on steering sectors.

Steering Sectors

In a nut shell.

Les is wrong, he lists the wrong size.
Needle bearings are a crap shoot. If you have a sector shaft that is hard enough then you will not have problems. Otherwise they needles will put dents in the sector and eventually break.
The bushings being sold by the various A suppliers are not the correct ID. They do not have enough meat to hone to round.
 
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