Tired OBS Steering Gets Revived!

[Music] [Music] hey what's up guys we got the 94 gmc back in the shop obs and if yours is anything like mine it's got 200 000 miles and you're fighting the steering so today we're gonna address that got a new steering gear box and cunningham machine steering shaft so i'm looking forward to this all the reviews on these things look awesome and it's like the one thing keeping me from driving this right now is that it takes two hands and it's still kind of scary to drive we've replaced a lot of stuff up until now i've got all new steering as far as tie rods and pitman arm and bushings ball joints all that's new only thing left is the steering gearbox i even have a new rag joint on the steering shaft but it's i don't know we're going to get rid of the rag joint off completely and do a cunningham machine steering shaft with u-joints i'll show you that in just a second but yeah i'm looking forward to driving this some more so let's fix it all right guys this is what came in the mail today uh this is the redhead steering gearbox and got this a couple days ago this is the cunningham machine steering shaft and this eliminates the rag joint that comes in these old trucks with and you get u-joints which is metal like on metal this eliminates all that play that can happen in the old style steering shaft and it's a well-built american-made piece so looking forward to putting this on it this is a bolt-in uh installation this will go right in place of the other one this is the red head steering gearbox i went with the normal ratio not the quick ratio the quick ratio i was on the fence about it this is just a cruiser truck it's a hundred dollars more for the quick ratio i could have went either way but we just got the normal uh three-turn lock-to-lock gearbox where i think the quick ratio is 2.5 turns but all the in the forums everything i've read about these uh was stellar they're good sometimes if you go to the parts store autozone discount they're you never know what you're gonna get and those are still running a couple hundred bucks at autozone and they'll start leaking and won't deal with the play in there at all sometimes so i thought it'd be better to spend a little bit more get something a little more quality and i won't have to fool with it no more hopefully for the life of the truck let's see what this is about i haven't opened this one yet like i said all the reviews have been good on it that i've read sealed up in there all right big yellow tag on here warning any adjustment by anyone will void the warranty this gear was bench tested and double checked for play therefore is no play in the steering gear oh don't mess with it they say all right first step drain the old fluid out of here and you can see in this obs we got a ls motor very common these days let me see how this works it's just one of these little hand cheap pumps i don't think this one's going to be any good look at all that rust been a while since i used [Music] there we go i'm getting something anyways and i guess you're supposed to change this fluid every once in a while it keeps the wear down on the steering gearbox i have never really done that before but oh man i'm getting dirty that's part of working on stuff um but yeah i guess in the future i'm gonna try to keep this fluid as clean as possible especially since we're invested in the uh the redhead steering gearbox that's most of it that'll limit the mess that we make anyways i guess a shop vac could have worked on this got the fluid pumped out best we can no if those little chunks were in the pump or in the in the reservoir because that pump had been sitting for a while i'm gonna hope in the pump but not the reservoir down there all right here you can see the old gearbox leaking like crazy out that shaft out the bottom there i mean it is dirty under here uh i think the trucks got over 200 000 now i don't know the odometer quit working at 196 a year ago or two when we did the ls swap so it's definitely well over 200. you can see the new rag joint back there gonna completely eliminate that though we've got new tie rod inner and outer new control arms upper and lower so i should have this thing driving really good after all these upgrades all right we got both of these lines off make sure you got a pan down there because they're going to leak a little bit of fluid 18 millimeter worked on both of those lines now we need to uh loosen this bolt to get the steering shaft off so for the steering shaft that bolt is a 13. and get that loosened up all right with that steering shaft bolt loosened up you want to get in here with a pry bar or something and you're gonna collapse this up this shaft will collapse into itself there it's not it's almost off i'm gonna shove it a little bit farther i think it they make them collapse like that as a safety feature that way when you get in a collision that this doesn't you don't turn into a kebab with this going up through the cab so we got those two separated since we're replacing the whole shaft i'm going to have to do that again up here get that bolt loose and slide it off but i've got the steering wheel leveled and the tire straight i guess it doesn't really matter because we're replacing all this and um i'm going to try to remember where that flat piece was on the spline and have the other the new one kind of the same and definitely going to need an alignment anyways like we've changed the front whole front end of this truck and haven't got an alignment so it's due for one i was kind of waiting to get this done before i got one and uh so we'll get it as close as we can and get it we'll get it aligned so up here is a 15 millimeter on the steering shaft we're gonna get it loosened up probably not a bad idea to do that again especially on components like this where it's like a safety thing old technology right there i mean it did the job we'll fix it up with something better all right the new versus the old new joints and rack joints just replace the same but they're cheap on a lot of trucks this right here will fix your loose steering it's just old technology and these trucks are from the 90s and most of them are need to be replaced so there's some if you look in the forums there's some jeep steering shafts that will work in the 88 through 98 some of the trucks it's just easier for me to order this brand new cunningham machine one then scour around and trying to find a low mileage one out of a jeep but for a lot of trucks this does the trick for the steering all right we got the truck up in the air uh the steering shaft is out we're going to start working on the bolts on the gearbox itself and get the pitman arm off but you definitely don't have to have a lift to do this just makes it a little easier if you do got one so might as well use it so the next thing is to get the pitman arm off of the gearbox but you gotta loosen this bolt here and take it off the steering linkage get that cotter pin out we'll do that next and then take off this big nut and use a little puller to get it off we're not we're keeping this pitman arm it's fairly new it's probably a couple months old it doesn't have a lot of miles on it so we'll reuse that piece but we need to get it off of there all right so it's 22 millimeter bolt on this uh pitman arm to center link right here and i got that off in the cotter pin and i used this air hammer with the pickle fork and just separated these two which i've never used one of these but holy cow that was that was way easier so i got those separated now i need to pop this bolt off and put the pitman arm puller on to get that part the normal size sockets wouldn't work i had to come open the jumbo drawer and get out the inch and 5 16. um don't have to reach in here much but it's nice to have these ginormous ones when you need it all right so i got the inch and 5 16 on here this is the uh harbor freight earthquake let's see if it's got what it takes to uh pop this big uh nut off of here safety first oh man super easy the steering shaft isn't hooked up so um you went to push on it with a a wrench if the wheels were moving so it was nice to be able to just buzz it off with that earthquake for the wind i'll bring you in here here's the puller on there just kind of grab on each side of the pitman arm drive this in and it's gonna pull it off of there they're relatively inexpensive so this is kind of one that you can afford to have in the shop for situations like this that's cheap you can rent them from autozone and o'reilly's in those places too if you need to be and i've done that but i think the last time i rented this one okay get out the earthquake again and give it a go there we go we got a little warm on that one might have kind of messed up the thread let me bound here and bound up here you might want to go ahead and loosen this and work it off of there now so it looks like this is a 22 no 21 so these three bolts on to the gearbox not that loose it shouldn't really go anywhere but we'll keep the hand on it just in case all right we got the extension she's loose now just sitting in there just kind of fell down this is a very dirty job so if you got some love laying around i recommend it all right here's a side by side old one leaking seal i believe to be original to the truck as far as i can tell compared to the new red head they put a little mark here so they can tell if you're trying to adjust on it look almost identical but zero miles and fresh seals 200 plus k and blown seals so this should revive the steering a lot along with the new shaft the u-joint so we're getting there i went ahead and hit it with some black spray paint it's a satin um i think they shipped this one raw it was uncoated or unpainted it's like 25 cheaper i think to do that and i had some black paint here so we just hit it with that real quick all right so it's the next day [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] from what i'm finding online the torque spec for the pitman arm to the center link is about 46. i saw i saw 50 46 and one even said 60. so just got to make sure you can line up the cotter pin and then this guy was 180 from redheads uh website so we need to set the torque wrench to 180 and it's a big uh inch and 5 16 nut so you need to the jumbo size on that there we go 180. all right got it bolted in and this big nut torqued to 180 and we got that one torqued to 50. don't forget your cotter pin and uh we can start uh hooking the lines up and um all right got the gearbox installed uh gotta hook up the lines now but the end of the line there's a little o-ring you gotta swap out or if you're just missing put it on there and uh red head was nice enough to send you a little baggie i know some of the years are different um but this truck looks like it came with o-rings on the end of the lines here so i'm swapping those out we'll get those installed and uh we'll keep going just keep in mind if yours uses o-rings just watch out for that we got the cunningham shaft steering shaft installed um it's a little snug up at the top but it went on which is kind of a good thing i guess looks good i'm going to top it off for fluid and they test them with atf red head does test the gearbox with them so that's what i'm using they say as long as it's decks three or higher so i just picked up some lucas stuff it's pretty good for the price so we'll go through the bleeding process getting the air out of it all right so i topped it off i'm going to hop inside turn the steering wheel clock lock the lock a few times then we got to work some of the air out of it all right so we wrapped up the install on the steering gearbox and the steering shaft and this thing night and day difference i should have done this a long time ago really uh makes these trucks easier to drive it's kind of questioning it because it is kind of expensive for that gearbox but man it uh turned out pretty nice here you can see the steering shaft that's the cunningham machine there goes the gearbox down there and i drove this thing to work last week in an hour about an hour each way did awesome it actually steers easier you can it's like back to one finger steering this thing it's real smooth i don't know what caused that but i did put atf in the reservoir that's what you know the gearbox people use when they test them so that might have made it smoother with just all the new components and no more darting around and drive straight about as straight as you can get these old trucks to go and uh it's a way it's just a pleasure to drive now this is one that you could do in a afternoon with in the garage it's three bolts to get that gearbox off uh it's kind of a little bit pain to pull the pitman arm but that ain't even that bad that wasn't even that hard for me but i mean one afternoon you could have your truck steering really nice highly recommend it [Music] you

Channel: Repair and Share Garage

Views: 41,491

Keywords: remove steering slop, remove steering freeplay, how to remove steering slop, fix steering freeplay, fix steering slop, steering coupler, how to remove freeplay in steering, how to improve steering feel, fix play in steering, steering coupler fix, steering coupler replacement, steering deadzone fix, how to adjust freeplay in steering, how to clean steering wheel, how to adjust a steering box, how to tighten a steering box, loose steering 1977 ford f250, driving

Id: 7fGNdODZfG0

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022