Remove the pitman arm from the center link. The pitman arm is the arm that connects from the bottom of the steering box to the steering cross link. It changes the rotation of the steering into the side-to-side motion of the front wheels. I have a matching pitman arm on the replacement box. If you don't have the pitman, you'd remove the pitman from the box, and attach it to the new box. This is a little more work.
First remove the stud nut. I used a little heat from a propane torch to expand the metal of the arm from the stud. Then I hammered a pickle fork separator into the joint. This worked easily with the help from the torch.
Incidentally, I once did this for a friend, and we didn't have a separator tool available, but I had an idea. I heated the pitman arm end up the same way, with a torch. Then I took an ice cube and set it on the end of the stud that goes through. The center link stud compressed from the localized cooling and literally dropped right out! No hammering. It was neat. Isn't science wonderful?
The box unbolts by 3 long bolts that go from the outside of the frame, through the frame, through the inner frame rail, and into tapped holes in the steering box. This is a pretty simple remove and replace. But I have one more trick to show you.
The threaded holes in the manual box were loaded with dirt and gungo. You should never jam bolts into threads like that. You're better than that. Normally I'd run a tap through the holes to clean them out nicey-nice. I suspected these were metric threads, and I don't have any metric taps. So I just made thread-cleaning bolts.
Clean the bolt threads with a wire wheel. Secure a bolt in a vise. Then fire up an air-powered cutoff wheel, and cut a groove into the threads, along the axis of the bolt, starting at the end. In a pinch, you could use a hacksaw, but it's a little more difficult. I have done it this way. I love my pneumatic cutoff wheel.
It only has to be like an inch long. Do this to all the bolts, one groove each is fine. Man, these crap photos are BUGGIN' ME!
Now when you thread the bolts into the cloggy steering box threads, the dirt gets scraped into the slot in the bolt, just like it's the flute in a tap. You can insert and remove the bolt a couple of times, cleaning out the groove in the bolt each time, to get all the dirt out. This usually works great, and the bolt will not be appreciably weakened by the small groove.
Class dismissed. Maybe I'll redo the photos if I have time.
