Hi All, Well it has been many years since I gave this issue much thought. The steering gears in our trucks from 1972 threw 1993 were made by Saginaw... Yes you guessed it . A GM co. The model was 708. . The 708 was a vary good gear . It rarely failed. It's only real problem was that the sector shaft would get loose after years of use. My solution in years past was to just install a NEW unit and be done with it for another 200,000 miles Well now there are no new units left to be had. ALL the rebuilts I have seen seem to have loose sector shafts right out of the box. Now I have no choice but to solve the problem and fix them myself. . I have torn down some of the worn out units as well as the remans to see just what the problem was . None of them had much wear on the sector shafts . The remans had new bearings in them. The sector shafts were tight on the bench. So I put a few of the remans back on a truck . With a helper rocking the steering wheel I could see the sector shaft wig waging side to side. . Hmmmmm... . They were all fine on the bench. . So I tore them down again . . I pressed the sector shaft needle bearings out of the housings. I got out all my precision measuring equipment and proceeded to measure every bore in the main housing's. The sector shaft bearing bores were egg shaped in every housing. They were checking tight on the bench because the needle bearing has its own cage keeping it round. It is only when installed on a truck that enough force can be exerted on the sector shaft to deform the bearing to the deformed housing causing the shaft to wig wag left and right.
Ok . this s not all that tough to figure out. So why aren't the rebuilders fixing the problem ??
I called / wrote all the major rebuilders in the USA . They all proclaimed that they never had any problem like that ... Yeah . . I guess thats why all their steering gears are junk... .
The solution is that the housings are going to have to be bored , sleeved . To test my theory I used an expansion reamer to make the hole round. I pressed the bearing in with shims stock to get the correct clearance . . Installed it on the truck... Zero slop at the wheel... .
I am having some carbide cutters made now for the boring the housings. I am waiting for quotes on making the tubing for the sleevs... It is going to take . 040 to clean up the bores. I contacted several bearing manufacturers to get quotes for making over sized bearings. . The quotes were off the chart ! So sleeving is our only option. I used shim stock for the experiment. But that will NOT work for long term use. IT WOULD BE DANGEROUS to do so.
After I get the tooling and tubing I will offer the repair to everyone. I can rebuild the whole gear or just repair the housing if the owner wants to rebuild it himself and save some money.
I have also acquired all the soft parts to rebuild the vac and p/s pumps as well...
Stay tuned for further details..... MM
Ok . this s not all that tough to figure out. So why aren't the rebuilders fixing the problem ??
I called / wrote all the major rebuilders in the USA . They all proclaimed that they never had any problem like that ... Yeah . . I guess thats why all their steering gears are junk... .
The solution is that the housings are going to have to be bored , sleeved . To test my theory I used an expansion reamer to make the hole round. I pressed the bearing in with shims stock to get the correct clearance . . Installed it on the truck... Zero slop at the wheel... .
I am having some carbide cutters made now for the boring the housings. I am waiting for quotes on making the tubing for the sleevs... It is going to take . 040 to clean up the bores. I contacted several bearing manufacturers to get quotes for making over sized bearings. . The quotes were off the chart ! So sleeving is our only option. I used shim stock for the experiment. But that will NOT work for long term use. IT WOULD BE DANGEROUS to do so.
After I get the tooling and tubing I will offer the repair to everyone. I can rebuild the whole gear or just repair the housing if the owner wants to rebuild it himself and save some money.
I have also acquired all the soft parts to rebuild the vac and p/s pumps as well...
Stay tuned for further details..... MM
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