RE: Steering box

["Henrik Hasager Johansen" <hjohansen@domain.elided>]

Paul, As far as I remember your Spider is a 72. The steering box needs
to come outta the car in order to take it apart. You need to remove the
exhaust manifold in the process and don't put the master cylinders back
on 'till the box is back in. The reason you have to take the whole box
out is the shaft. It is firmly attached to the box. You also have to
take the steering wheel and the steering tube off. It is quite a task. I
would say that if your box is OK without play or bad noises, fill it up
with 80W90 oil again. 

Henrik

-----Original Message-----

Okay, I know I'm supposed to be putting things back together but as I
was
getting ready to bleed the brakes and clutch I went through my records
and
discovered that I hadn't rebuilt the master cylinders yet so I pulled
them
off. I knew there would be some brake fluid in the booster because of a
leaky master cylinder years ago but when I saw how much I decided I'd
pull
the thing off, inspect and clean it out properly. Well that lead to
removing
the whole pedal box assembly......but that's not the story I want to
tell
right now.

Anyway, since the steering box was just staring at me openly after
removing
all that other stuff I decided to pop the top off and see what's inside.
I
guess it used to be filled with oil which leaked out decades ago so i'm
wondering if I should take it apart, clean it and pack the bearings with
grease. Has anyone out there done this? If so can I do it without
pulling
the whole box off the car? The reason is that I installed a chassis
stiffener and I don't really want to go through the hassle or
reinstalling
those bolts again. It looks like I can pop the front and rear plates off
and
get the bearings out (after pulling the steering shaft out). Is there
anything else I can do? Anything rebuildable? Any parts available?

TIA

Paul Irvine - Antioch CA
Project Alfa - http://home.pcmagic.net/pi
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