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Worn steering box

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57_BN4

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Hi All,

I have a BN2 steering box belonging to a friend and it has worn in the un-bushed upper bearing where the rocker shaft runs in the cast iron housing just below the worm/peg. Is there a recommended cure for this situation?

The box has had grease in it for the last 25 odd years and I suspect this is why it has worn. The shaft is still in good enough condition and I'm thinking about boring the housing out for a bushing the same as the lower one. Anyone had to do this?

Andy.
 
That's how I would try to save it. I'd want to source a relatively "thin walled" bush, so you're removing a minimal amount of the original cast iron (and providing for a future attempt, if this one proves unsuccessful).

A vital finishing step would be passing a reamer through upper and lower bushes, to insure perfect alignment with no "high" spots.
 
57_BN4 said:
Hi All,

I have a BN2 steering box belonging to a friend and it has worn in the un-bushed upper bearing where the rocker shaft runs in the cast iron housing just below the worm/peg. Is there a recommended cure for this situation?

The box has had grease in it for the last 25 odd years and I suspect this is why it has worn. The shaft is still in good enough condition and I'm thinking about boring the housing out for a bushing the same as the lower one. Anyone had to do this?

Andy.
Click to expand...
When I owner s BN2, the worn bushing was replace with a piston pin bushing from a continental/case engine. Worked great! The key was is a good machine shop whose owner oversaw a lot of the work. Grease was used a lot many years ago to stop the flow of oil from a leaky seal.
 
Thanks Randy and Patrick. Hopefully tomorrow I can find a bushing that'll do the trick. In the most British way, the shaft is a slightly different diameter at the top compared to the bottom where the original bushing is so I'll have to be creative when line-reaming them.

I think what happened here is a long ago PO replaced the seal with the box in the car and used a ball joint splitter wedge to drive off the pitman arm. This resulted in the seal recess getting squashed so the new seal leaked even worse than the old one- hence the grease repair. I'll also have to restore the seal groove somehow.

Andy.
 
57_BN4 said:
Thanks Randy and Patrick. Hopefully tomorrow I can find a bushing that'll do the trick. In the most British way, the shaft is a slightly different diameter at the top compared to the bottom where the original bushing is so I'll have to be creative when line-reaming them.

I think what happened here is a long ago PO replaced the seal with the box in the car and used a ball joint splitter wedge to drive off the pitman arm. This resulted in the seal recess getting squashed so the new seal leaked even worse than the old one- hence the grease repair. I'll also have to restore the seal groove somehow.

Andy.
Click to expand...
It's been since '76 when I did my 100 box and I may have had a standard 6 cly box bushing as well as the piston pin bushing too. The seal/groove area can be machined, you just have to find a good machine shop that cares.
 
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