03-06 Steering Gear Box Replacement Recommendations

[mrblaine]

Ah, damn.

Well, I'll be the Guinea pig, just ordered one.

The steering gear install with no body lift is not the problem. Since it is a box built on the Saginaw pattern, all you need to do is get the hoses from a 97-02 steering gear and no body lift is required. The gotcha is you should NOT run the steering gear and pump without a cooler as that does a big disservice to you, your money and effort and PSC's products. You will be abusing all without a cooler and you should NOT run the steering gear without an upgraded pump for the same reasons.

The cooler return out of the steering gear is where the trouble starts. It needs to be -8 from that port all the way back to the remote reservoir to allow the system to work as well as it should. Getting the larger diameter line out of the port, into the grill and back out of the grill is a bigger challenge without a body lift unless you don't mind hacking up the grill. I mind that much more than a basic body lift.

 

[mrblaine]

OK So I've done about 50 miles with a rebuilt OEM box I got on ebay. There is no slop, it feels tight and new. Problem is that it feels too tight. It has zero return to center. I know there are some adjustments possible, but have yet to look into what they do and how to do them, but even if I cant adjust this out on the new box, it's still an improvement over my old box.

That's precisely why I'll never do another reman box. It is highly likely that if you adjust the lash until you get a tolerable return to center, the on-center slop will be intolerable.

 

[mrblaine]

Can the stock pump be used with the PSC gear or does it need a manlier pump?

I have a gent I helped with a PSC gear several years ago. He said he was eventually going to get the whole system, probably, but needed something to replace his leaking OEM gear. Based on his promise to do the whole system, we installed just the gear. As years have gone by, he had been in touch several times about wearing out the PSC gear. After about 3 times of it needing to be sent in and gone through, I finally chatted with Tom about it to figure out what was going on. He related that the gears need the upgraded pumps to live much longer in use. Can you? Sure. Should you? no

 

[mrblaine]

Are you BL'd? Any modifications other than drilling the slip shaft in the steering shaft?

For the record for the umpteenth time. One does not need to drill the injection molded retainer to shorten the shaft. It is a high resistance plastic designed to break free in a high energy frontal impact to reduce the possibility of the shaft saying hi to your breastbone with lots of enthusiasm. Set a block of hard wood on the concrete after marking the correct collapsed length and then smack the end on the wood. It will collapse and shorten with low effort. I quit doing that many years ago due to slop in the shaft developing over time. That has led some folks to weld it right at the interface which I prefer not to do. I just use the early lower shaft which is the correct length for a Saginaw pattern steering gear.

 

[mrblaine]

Found the pic of my specific model.

View attachment 674366

There is enough variability in the output of the high volume pumps that we can't depend on it and then be able to run that size T-bar. We've had to back it down and use smaller versions to match the output of the pumps.