At 5:51 PM -0400 10/7/96, Jeff Williamson wrote:
>At 12:43 PM 10/1/96 -0800, David J. R. Williams wrote:
>
>>The worm gear has a couple of
>>'chips' out of the metal but appears to work OK and turn smoothly. Can
>>anyone with steering box expertise tell me what might be a sign that I need
>>to spend the (considerable) $ for a new worm gear?
>>HAS ANYONE TRIED USING GREASE INSTEAD OF OIL IN THESE THINGS?
>>Can't stop mine leaking thru the drop arm?
>
>The steering oil leak was caused by a bad seal
>at the bottom of the box where the control arm goes through.
Hi,
For what it's worth:
- it's really easy to damage the seal when reassembling the box, by slicing
the seal lip on a sharp part of the rocker shaft as you reinstall the
shaft. You can prevent this by wrapping the end of the shaft in thin paper
or something similar to cover the threads, splines, etc. If you get this
and the brass olive sealing the inner column right the box will not leak.
- The groove in the worm gear (at least the original one, don't know about
the repros) is slightly narrower at the midpoint. When the box is adjusted
right, this gives the steering wheel a tiny bit of resistance just at the
straight-ahead position.
The worm gear wears fastest around the midpoint, since you are going
straight a lot of the time. With a slightly worn gear, you first lose the
recentering resistance, and then you start to have play at the midpoint of
the steering wheel's rotation that cannot be adjusted out without causing
the box to bind as you turn away from straight ahead. If you've replaced
the cam follower ("peg") and you still can't adjust the box to have no play
at the midpoint while turning freely at the limits, you need a new worm
gear, even if it otherwise shows no visible damage.
cheers,
-john
jtw@lcs.mit.edu
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