Me Van

[cros]

I lamented the large amount of free play in the vans steering somewhere on here, and it was the only fly in the ointment in an otherwise enjoyable journey I've been on today. I've just looked inside a spare steering box to see if it would yield some bits I could tighten things up with.

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The play between the nut and the shaft can be seen above, add in some more between the roller and nut and top it off with play in the steering bushes and I doubt if there's any chance of changing direction at all with this one.
However it looks as if it's easy to slip a new nut in-

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The steering arm and roller pushes up and away (normally held in place by the cover) and it looks to me that after removing the lower bearing cover the shagged out nut will just screw out of the bottom. All I need to find is a new one...

[paulplom]

Looks complicated?

[DodgeRover]

Can you make a new nut on a lathe?

[cros]

Can you make a new nut on a lathe?

I could just about, but I absolutely wouldn't be able to cut the thread accurately enough to improve things. This one has a 6 starts and there seem to be lots of variants with different numbers and left handed versions too. I wasn't aware of how common this type of box used to be, and I think one might come along on eBay in time, though the 5 listed at present are 4 or 5 start.
There was no bearing at the bottom of the steering column so the nut was very easy to extract; if I can find a new one it is a 5 minute job to swap with the worn one. That's good design.

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[Hooli]

Worth asking a proper engineering place? I realise there are none with a million miles of you, as you're in the middle of nowhere.

[cros]

Worth asking a proper engineering place? I realise there are none with a million miles of you, as you're in the middle of nowhere.

I'll see if anything comes up on eBay first.
This afternoon I changed the temp/ ammeter gauge for one I painted to better match the Speedo. The ammeter got the elbow as its of little use with an alternator and having the fuel gauge in its place means I can ditch the modern temporary one.
The appearance isn't perfect but will have to do.

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[cros]

I couldn't live with the van's wiper switch sitting in the middle buy of the dash doing nothing now that they're powered by electricity instead of the original camshaft drive. It had to be addressed, so I cobbled a switch onto the mechanical gearbox and job done.

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[AMCrebel]

Nice work. The 55-57 Chevy wipers were vac powered - operated by remote cable, but you could specify electric wipers. For those the cable had a switch on the end.

[fried onions]

Vacuum powered anything is ace.

[BenHar]

Vacuum powered anything is ace.

Except when you are going up a long hill!

Ben