Steering box adjustment

Today I spent a couple of hours adjusting some of the play out of the steering box. I saw a post about this on another forum so I decided to give it a go. Hopefully this coupled with the new ball joints should make the steering good enough to not have to touch the steering relay or swivel housings for a while. The great thing about this adjustment is that you don't need any new parts to do it, really helpful when you're on a budget.

The wheel nuts were super tight because they probably haven't been touched for years but heaps of CRC 556 and 5 minutes of bouncing up and down on a breaker bar saw them finally give in. I was afraid I might end up with more snapped studs which would have been a real pain but they all held on. 

The amount of mud that has piled up over the years is incredible and I managed to remove a few kilos while getting to the bolts. To get to the steering box you have to remove the cover which is held on by three bolts, one in the driver's footwell and two on the inner wing. As you can see in the photos the steering box cover is completely rotted away so I didn't hold much hope for the bolts. I gave them a good soaking of 556 and tried to get them off. It is possible to do this with one person like I did but it would be a lot easier with two. Only one bolt came off unscathed with the others snapping quite violently.

The steering box adjustment is done with a bolt on the housing. Usually the housing is covered in grease so you will have to clean it up before attempting to undo it. It has a 24mm locking nut over the 11mm bolt that will need to be undone before you can adjust it.

There isn't enough room to get a socket over top so I tried using a crescent to undo it. Even after multiple blows with a hammer it didn't budge. After what seemed like a long time hammering and swearing about the stupidity of the engineers that didn't leave room for a socket I gave up. Instead i gave the mudguard a few hefty blows with the hammer so I could get a socket on. Fine for me with a rough car but not ideal if it is a freshly restored example. I may take out the mudguard later on and cut a slot for it to fit but I think that will just end up with more broken bolts. With the breaker bar and a 24mm socket it came off super easy. To tighten the steering turn the 11mm in and lock it with the nut. Make sure you lock it before testing it otherwise it will adjust as you test. If you tighten the bolt too much the steering will become very heavy so it is best to have a little more play and lighter steering. I ended up not putting the cover back on because it was doing nothing anyway and the bolts are a pain to do up. I'll need to get another one but for now i'm not too concerned.  Here's a picture of the cover - probably repairable but I can't weld and new ones are relatively cheap so in the bin it goes.

A short drive up our gravel drive showed a little decrease in scariness but I never noticed the play off road anyway. I will have to get it on tarmac to see it it has made a real improvement.

Going to spend the weekend repacking the bearings in the nearside rear hub and cleaning up the brake system on the offside rear hub. I will then move onto doing the same on the front axle and generally cleaning up the wheel arches.