Manual Steering Box Rebuild

[decoupe]

I bought a manual steering box from a 71 2800 e3 which I then took apart, thoroughly cleaned and bought new seals. I've run into a problem reassembling that has me baffled (not that difficult I agree). There are three sets of identical needle bearing sets in races pressed into the castings of the top (1 set) and case (2 sets) which result in a bearing set at each end of the shaft and one in the middle. I have installed the needle bearings into the races (with a film of motor assembly grease to hold them in place) and the top needle bearing set slipped onto the shaft with no problems.

Unfortunately, the shaft will not slide into the lower two races with lots of wiggling but no extremes of force (ie ball peen hammer) applied. This makes no sense to me as withdrawing the shaft was effortless and the needles dropped out of the races freely. Given no new parts are in this assembly and it had 100k miles on the original assembly it should be easy to insert - like the top was.

Am I missing something here?

http://s54.photobucket.com/user/decoupe/media/Steering Box/IMG_3374_zpscf1629e4.jpg.html?sort=4&o=0

 

[frogisland]

Are the two gears properly aligned/located? Remember this causing some issues on mine.

 

[craterface]

Doug, can't answer your question, but I can say you will love manual steering on our coupe. Worth the effort. It transforms the car.

Scott

 

[Nicad]

Doug, can't answer your question, but I can say you will love manual steering on our coupe. Worth the effort. It transforms the car.

Scott

Jeez, now I want one.

Good luck Doug.

 

[decoupe]

Done

The box is back together and ready to install once I pull the PS box this afternoon.

Turns out the needle bearings for the top race are 2.48mm and the middle and bottom are 2.34mm bearings. Once I measured and separated the two bearing types the installation was easy with the steering shaft just sliding in nicely.

RealOEM shows all three as the same part and the Blue manuals don't mention any difference but I should have bagged them by bearing assembly when I took it all apart - dugh Doug.

I'm curious what the weight difference will be.

Edit:

For what it's worth, the total difference in weight is 35lbs.

 

[Nicad]

I swapped power steering into my Bavaria years ago. I preferred it around town, but the manual steering was better on the highway. Looking forward to you observations once complete as you are on 16 inch wheels (or bigger?) as I recall.

 

[decoupe]

Manual Steering

Most of my driving is highway and I've driven my 2002 enough to learn the tricks of manual steering in town. Rubber is 225/245/17 so three pointers will challenge.

Not much fun in TO this winter - my wife went to visit family on Ottawa and got the freezing rain welcome. Why I left the east.

Doug