More steering box questions! bearing surfaces...

Early Bay Forum

Help Support Early Bay Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Happystamps

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2010
Messages
1,078
Reaction score
1
Location
Worcester
Morning fellas,
Have a look at the photos below, if you will. Me worm gear bearing surfaces are all goosed and galled. Am I right in thinking that there's a fix for this? I'm considering getting the surfaces turned town to fresh metal, but first is there anyone that replaces the seats? The pin's really lovely and the casing is all cleaned up already- plus the box was only £25- so I'm reluctant to scrap it.

Any advice?

Ta

Simon





 
Discussing with a colleague the possibility of removing the end feature, turning down the bearing surface and installing a removable bearing race. Can't think of any particular reason why that won't work ATM... gets rid of any case hardening issues, you just need a lathe or plunge grinder, and you can (possibly?) replace with needle bearings?

Who knows. Not me, I'm just a desk engineer.
 
OK, so current plan.

Bore out steering box casting from 41mm to 42mm to allow fitting of angular contact bearings.

turn down bearing surfaces on worm gear to 20mm. get rid of existing (galled) bearing surface in process, plus (incidentally) retention ring features. This will leave the flange interface intact at an OD of 19mm. Polish new 20mm oil seal mating surface.

Fit angular contact or deep groove bearings 20mm ID x 42mm OD x 12mm depth. The part number is 7004 ACD or 6004. angular contact are literally 10x the price and I'm not sure that they're necessary- will talk to a specialist.

Replace 24mm x 37mm x 7mm oil seal with 20mm x 37mm x 7mm oil seal. I've got one in the post.

Now we should be facing a situation where the new bearings are fitted to the existing worm gear and occupy the same space. The pressure cap (end plate) interfaces with the new outer bearing so we should be able to shim to the correct pre-load. The only issue is that the retainer ring doesn't do anything (new bearings don't have a complete pressure face) but since they're just to hold the assembly in place during mass production, leaving them off shouldn't be a problem if I'm careful putting it all together. Plus if I use the deep groove bearings they come as a unit anyway- don't need the retention feature.

We also don't have to worry about getting rid of any case hardening- since the new bearings will run in their own little hardened seats.
 
Still playing about with this in case anyone's interested.... I've done a drawing to show my lathemonkey what I'm after:



And I've bought the appropriate 20mm ID, 12mm depth, 42mm OD Deep groove ball bearings. They were £3.17 each. I could have gone for angular contact bearings, which would have been closer to the original design- but I'm reliably informed that the deep groove are perfectly happy with the axial load that they'd be under.

I've also found a torque screwdriver which can be used to check the tension on the input shaft. It needs to be between 2-4 inch pounds- this little screwdriver slips at 0.34Nm, which is 3 inch pounds (give or take).

A watchmakers torque dial would have been easier to use, but they're expensive, so:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Valve-Core-Torque-Wrench-Preset-to-0-34-nm-Newton-Meters-For-TPMS-Sensors/121004707498?_trksid=p2045573.c100033.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131017132637%26meid%3Dec10e6815cf04ffc9ef29d62996b4263%26pid%3D100033%26prg%3D20131017132637%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D301359565336" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So now (hopefully) I can get my input shaft turned down, my box opened up by 1mm, my new bearings on the input shaft and the tension set correctly. The rest of my box is OK, so that should sort it :)
 
Nice to see a good engineering approach - would be nice if you could have a motorised rig that could simulate long-term testing of it! 8)
 
Hello mate, any news yet?? I got quite entranced reading through that lot. The only question I have really is about the lathe work on the ends of the shaft. Does the person doing it realise that you have been calling him/her a monkey ??? :shock:

Ozziedog,,,,,,,,,,,,, You know I won`t grass you up Si :mrgreen:
 
Still out with mr. Lathe at the moment (Although he hasn't discovered the monkey comment, I'm playing it safe...)

Should be back in a few days, I'm being charged "A couple of beers" although it's entirely possible it'll be far too hard and he'll refuse to do it. Who knows, he seemed to think it'd be OK.

After that it's just a case of boring the case out by 1mm (Bore is 41mm on these bearings, new bearings are 42mm OD) then a quick lick of black paint and bolt it all back up :)

Side note, I bought one of these:



Which is...you guessed it... AN MMH Torque meter as used by Boing, with a range of 0-50 In/oz. £6.50, and obviously 1 inch/lb is 16inch/oz, so I'm hoping for something almost at the end of that meter.

Then I just have to sit back with my favourite musk on and wait for the women to start rolling in.
 
Great thread.. watching this with interest!
Where did you pick up the torque meter from, would love to find one.
Will
 
This was from ebay, it takes some searching as most of the torque gauges are of the angular type that they're using nowadays. I was looking into watch torque gauges as well but I'm pretty sure they're generally too light... Which seems insane, I'm pretty sure even blowing on this will max it out :)
 
I'm assuming that people are still interested in this.
Taken from my build thread:

"Well now.... What's this?

A steering worm with lovely removable bearings? Why I never.

Apparently this feels like it's both case hardened and induction hardened, so it's a bit of a bitch. Do-able though, apparently. I'm really happy with it, it rolls really freely. the bearings stick out a tiny bit too, so if I ever need to, I can heat them up with a blowtorch and tap them off to replace. Brilliant.

Next job is to bring the case in and get that bored out to 42mm (tolerances done on a case-by case basis! I want a tap fit on this, which has a code (h4,h5 etc) but I can't remember it.

"
 
Keep the info coming please. Watching with interest , got to turn out less than a new/ second hand one.

J & P
:D :D :D
 
Well so far it's been £6.34 and some beers for my buddy at work. Hopefully the box will be going out to get bored tomorrow, so with any luck I'd expect results next weekend I suppose...
 
Hi Gentlemen

My RHD steering is shot - it judders and clicks, the whole column is too high (self canceling indicator parts don't meet) and its probably been pretty neglected over the years and got MOT advisory last year

I am looking to take advantage of the GSF 30% sale that ends tomorrow any expensive parts
- could anyone advise me the parts I should get - I appreciate it's hard to diagnose from above, but any help grateful received.

I've heard about the "pin" that ofter wears down...

Is this it:

http://www.gsfcarparts.com/430vg0710" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What other bits tend to be replaced when the steering is renovated....?
 
slow-lane-Matt said:
Hi Gentlemen

My RHD steering is shot - it judders and clicks, the whole column is too high (self canceling indicator parts don't meet) and its probably been pretty neglected over the years and got MOT advisory last year

I am looking to take advantage of the GSF 30% sale that ends tomorrow any expensive parts
- could anyone advise me the parts I should get - I appreciate it's hard to diagnose from above, but any help grateful received.

I've heard about the "pin" that ofter wears down...

Is this it:

http://www.gsfcarparts.com/430vg0710" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What other bits tend to be replaced when the steering is renovated....?

You're right that it's often that pin- but there are other things that can cause rough steering within the box. That pin, for instance, sits on two sets of tapered needle bearings that could be buggered. Or the bearings on the input shaft might be gone, as in my case. You just don't know until you take the box apart to look inside. And when you're renovating a steering box, you'll probably want to replace the oil seals in it as well. They're easy to get hold of, but cross that bridge when you come to it.

The thing that interests me is that you're talking here about how the whole column is too high. That won't be a problem with your steering box, unless your input shaft (worm drive) bearings have disintegrated entirely and something else is pulling the thing up, which just wouldn't happen. I suspect what you have there is an installation issue, someone's taken it apart and not put anything back together properly. Feel free to take some pictures if you want more specific advise- top of the steering box form under the bus, bottom of the steering column shroud on the floor from the inside, indicator assembly etc.
 
Really interested to see if you had a chance to put it all back together and test on the road?
 

Latest posts

Top