1966 Chrysler power steering box issue

[TNT440]

I recently had my power steering gearbox rebuilt. During reassembly of all new steering components, it appears that the gear box may have been assembled with the shaft going to the pitman arm a tooth or 2 off if that is possible. With the master spline on the shaft that goes to the column at 12 o' clock, all tie rod ends set roughly equal, the wheels are turned to the right a bit. Too much to adjust out with tie rods. Am I correct to understand that the 4 wide splines on the large shaft should align or be at 90 degrees with mounting plate? If so mine is off a bit in the direction that would make the wheels be turned to the right. Maybe the good news is the pitman arm I have does not have any wide splines, just an indication line on the body of the arm. Does that shaft care if it is off a couple teeth and can I just point the wheels straight and slide the pitman arm on where it lands? The shaft that goes to the steering column turns 1 3/4 turns both ways from 12 o'clock.

 

[Ross Wooldridge]

Following, as I'm going to have my boxes rebuilt. Who performed your rebuilds? They should fix that, I would think.

 

[TNT440]

Following, as I'm going to have my boxes rebuilt. Who performed your rebuilds? They should fix that, I would

I'm sure they would fix it. Trying to find out here if I am correct about orientation of wide splines on centered pitman arm shaft. Then I will reach out to them. If there is no problem just moving the pitman arm a tooth or 2, it saves me about 7 hrs round trip driving.

 

[TNT440]

Don't know what happened there

 

[Ross Wooldridge]

Quotes.

Who rebuilt the box?

 

[TNT440]

Quotes.

Who rebuilt the box?

I'll PM you.

 

[TNT440]

Can't figure out how to delete PM's

 

[TNT440]

Figured it out.

 

[3175375]

Figured it out.

What happened?

 

[TNT440]

What happened?

Couldn't figure out how to delete PM's. Then I figured it out.

 

[3175375]

Couldn't figure out how to delete PM's. Then I figured it out.

I thought you had figured out what was wrong with the steering. Lol

 

[TNT440]

Great news! The steering box is fine. The problem was with my assumptions. The new pitman arm I bought did not have any master splines. What it did have was an indication line on the casting.

This is where I made the assumption that the line was to indicate where the master spline would be. With the pitman arm installed like that it puts the steering gear shaft and the center link in line. I compared the new pitman arm with the old one and it was obvious right away that I should not be using those marks as indexing references. With the master splines lined up with the line in the casting on the new arm, I set it at 3" center to center

The measurement at the center link end was 2 1/8",obviously should have been 3"

So I made the centers the same and made a new mark that should put me in the right location. The amount I had to turn it affected the overall length by about 1/16".

 

[MoPar~Man]

Here are some pics of a spare gear box I have. I don't know the history, it was bolted to the stub frame I used to replace my '67 Monaco's original stub.

I first rotated the worm shaft fully clockwise, here's what that looks like, showing where the keyway ends up:

Here's how the steering shaft keyways look in that position:

4 keyways. The pitman arm that came off this also had 4 keyways, they're symetrical.

Here's the worm shaft turned to the full counter-clock-wise position:

And here's how the steering-shaft looks now:

The longer marks are the CCW position, the shorter marks are the CW position. Bit of a difference there, but this should tell you how the 2 shafts are supposed to line up.

 

[TNT440]

Thanks, the pitman arm was the problem. All back together.