The Future Holds:

The Steering Details:

Initially, I was considering three possibilities for the steering; F-series truck, Lincoln/big Ford car, and big GM car. Yeah, I know there's other options, such as Toyota or Nissan truck boxes, but I personally wanted BIG and AMERICAN. Most of the time, I leaned towards the big GM car steering (I could honestly claim to have Cadillac steering). Also, since the Saginaw boxes (which come on GM cars and larger Ford trucks) are designed without the end cast into them (unlike the Ford-made boxes), the tool that machines them can reach all the way thru the raw casting, and be supported on either end of the box. This makes for more precise machining, and in turn, a better quality steering box that has fewer leak problems. Additionally, CJ's came with a Saginaw steering box, just like the GM cars. Therfore, a Saginaw steering box is a straight bolt-on (or, at least it is with the smaller Sagninaw steering box). I find that highly attractive. The downside I see (and this is only for my particular wide-axled, funky-suspensioned Jeep) is that it mounts on the inside of the frame rail. While this makes running the shaft from the steering column much easier (and like a more normal Jeep), it shortens the draglink just a bit more than an outside-of-the-frame-rail solution, like the F-series truck box, would. Of course, this outside-the-frame-rail mounting is the downside of the F-series steering box, as it complicates running the steering shaft and requires reworking the fender, as the steering shaft would have to pass thru the inner fender to reach the steering box. Additionally, the truck box sticks down further than either of the car boxes do. While this makes for a flatter draglink (which is desireable), it also sticks out where it's more likely to get banged on a rock.

* Note: Because of my extra-wide axles, I had more options on steering box selection than most Jeep guys have. One reason that Jeeps have the steering box inside of the frame rail is that with a normal-width axle, the left front tire would hit an outside-of-the-rail box on right-hand turns. Since my front axle is about four inches wider on each side, I've enough clearance that I could consider an outside-of-the-rail steering box.

I also needed a steering column and steering wheel. I wanted to use whatever matched up to the steering box; so I'd use a GM steering column with a GM steering box, or a Ford column with a Ford steering box. Past experiences (and other people) told me that Ford uses a round, splined end on the end of the steering column, while GM uses a round shaft that has two flat sides (this is sometimes called a "Double-D"). By matching the column, the intermediate shaft, and the box, all the fitment issues go away. Or so I thought. Oops. Just how wrong can I be?

I decided on GM components. Since this is what the Jeep used originally, they'd fit better, and the column wiring would probably fit without adaptation.

While there are ways to connect differing brands of steering components, and there are some really nice aftermarket intermediate shafts that can be used (from what I've seen, Borgenson stuff is top-notch), I decided to stay with your basic factory stuff. I have two reasons for this. First, I'm trying to put this all together on the cheap. Second, I can find factory pieces at most any junkyard, at a dealership, and at a lot of parts stores. If this thing breaks down in Somewhere, Out-In-The-Boonies, (the only place stuff ever seems to break on me), I should be able to find replacement parts.

I got lucky at the junkyards again. For some reason, I only seem to go after junkyard parts during the summer, when the Texas heat absolutely kills me. So, just like when I got each of the axles, getting steering components took me two trips to the junkyard.

Trying to cut down how long my second trip would be, my first trip was purely a scouting trip. There were lots of good steering box candidates; I was looking specifically at the big, huge GM cars (you know, the kind with the Coast Guard numbers on the fenders and mooring cleats on the sides). I decided to use the big power Saginaw box, instead of the smaller one that you can find on Camaros, Firebirds, and most Jeeps. Finding a steering column wasn't quite so easy. I fully expected most, if not all, of the cars to have the lock cylinder popped, but what extremely few cars still had the steering columns in them, all had the main tube bent, or a chunk bashed out of it. I'm not talking the plastic parts here, I'm talking the cast metal housing just behind the steering wheel, where the turn signal lever mounts, and also the main steel tube that runs the full length of the column. Also, I wanted a steering column that did not have an automatic transmission shifter on it. This limited my search to cars with a floor shifter.

* Note: AMC used steering columns purchased from GM and steering boxes purchase from Saginaw (like GM). AMC bought a lot of parts from other makers. The steering box and column are both standard-issue GM stuff. This makes life really easy when it comes to finding replacment, repair, and upgrade parts.

I found only two cars with steering columns that would work. One was a mid-1970's Camaro, and one was a late 1980's Firebird. I liked the column in the Firebird better, simply because it had tilt. However, I fully expected both columns to be gone or scavenged by the time I got back.

On the second trip, on the way to the very back of the yard to find the Firebird, there was a big Buick that had the entire front clip and radiator/radiator wall removed. The big steering box was sitting right out in the open. Since someone had removed the steering column (the column-to-box connecting shaft was still on the box), and the three bolts holding the box to the frame were out in the open, as was the tie rod/pitman arm, it was really easy to check the box for looseness (it was pretty tight), and it was also really easy to unbolt the box.

The Firebird still had its entire steering in place, less the horn button. Since the Firebird was sitting on top of a mini-van (here go all those common themes again), it took a bit more work than the steering box. I was surprised at all the wires hooked to the column, until I got home and noticed that I had gotten a leather-wrapped steering wheel that's in great shape, and a column with not only tilt, but all the levers and controls for intermittent wipers and cruise control. (No wonder there were so many wires!) The column had a flange welded to the bottom end of the tube that bolted to the Firebird's floor. This would have to come off, but it didn't look like it'll be too hard to grind thru the weld.

Mounting the steering column at this point was strictly temporary, as the column passes thru the dash, and the column needs to be removed to install the dash once that's assembled. However, by mounting the column before the dash, it makes it easier for me to work out the steering linkage.

Remember the flange that was welded onto the bottom end of the column? On a Jeep, the column sticks thru the firewall, so all this flange did was look ugly and make it hard to get the steering column thru the hole in the firewall. Some quick work with a hand grinder and a body hammer took care of the flange.

The first step to installing the steering column is to install is the pedal assembly. There's four bolts that hold the front end of the assembly; they pass thru the firewall, and also hold on the brake booster. Initially, for this fit-up, I left off the brake booster and just hand tightened the bolts. The top end of the pedal assembly has kind of a strange mounting system. Two of the bolts that hold on the dashboard go thru the dashboard, thru two holes in the flange of the body tub that bends down from the flat windshield mounting surface, then into two pretty small nutplates in the end of the thick steel of the pedal assembly. Since I was totally unable to locate the dash bolts in the box full of labeled Zip-Loc bags I have, I found two bolts of the right size and used those temporarily.

GM steering columns have two pairs of square nuts welded to the column, about halfway down the length of it, in what would be the 4:30 and 7:30 positions, from the driver's viewpoint. A bracket that passes under the column, then halfway up both sides, then goes out to the sides is used to support the column. Four short bolts go thru holes in this bracket and into the nuts on the column. I was planning on using the nice, new bracket that came with the column. Part of this was just because it was already bolted on (read this as laziness), and the other was that the bracket on the remnants of the old steering column hadn't been drilled right, so only three of the bolts had been used at the factory. Well, all this worked okay in theory, but in reality, it of course didn't. The new bracket was too wide at the flanges. You can't just re-drill the flanges, as there's no actual holes for the bracket-to-pedal assembly bolts. Instead, there's open-ended slots cut into the flange, and two potmetal pieces with slotted holes slip into the slots. No problem, I could use the old bracket. Well, the old bracket lined up even worse with the new column than it did with the old one. I ended up drilling out three of the four holes to get all four column bolts to fit. Once I got thru that exercise, everything bolted together okay.

The next thing I tried was was putting the steering box roughly in place, so I could check the length of the intermediate shaft. On a car, the steering box is located further back than on a 4x4. Thus, the intermediate shaft is shorter. At least six inches shorter. No problem, the old intermediate shaft should work. Well, the old shaft is set up for a splined steering column, instead of the double-D style.

Oops. Despite what all the documentation I've read says, there does appear to be a couple of different GM steering column styles, at least as far as the center shaft is concerned. This took a lot more fiddling to figure out.

Now, at that point, all I needed was a horn button to make this column complete. I thought about going to a Pontiac dealer for this. (I could just imagine the looks on the faces of the folks behind the parts counter when I hauled in the entire column and asked for a horn button to fit it.)

If you look at some of the other Jeep build-up pages I've got on this site, you'll see that my solution for getting an engine was to buy a complete (albeit, damaged) 1990 Ford Mustang GT. Since I have absolutely no salvageable Jeep wiring, I'm using the entire Mustang wiring harness in the Jeep. (Hey, if nothing else, I have it already.) This didn't seem like much of a problem, until I started looking at the steering column. I ran into a couple of problems. The first, is that high-beam/low-beam switch (controlled by pushing the turn signal lever back) interferes with the clutch pedal just a bit. Second, the wiring is radically different than the Mustang wiring, including the functions for the windshield wipers. Sure, I could remove all those functions from the steering column and put them back on the dash (or the floor, for the high-beam/low-beam switch), and remove the troublesome parts from the column, but then, I'd still have a huge wiring splice job a head of me.

So, I came to a decision point. I made a list of points for using the GM column.

Then, I made a list of the points for using the Mustang column.

Now, both columns have compatible double-D ends, although the Mustang column extends about 3" less into the engine compartment than the GM column does. That problem might be resolved when I adjust the mounting bracket.

Well, after all this going back-and-forth, lots of fitting, and worrying about the huge wiring mess potentials, I've decided that I'm going with the Mustang column. Life has gotten simpler.

The Mustang steering column has two brackets on it, one up high, and one near the end. The upper one, believe it or not, bolts right up to the pedal support. That's right, the Mustang column (basically a foreign part to a Jeep), bolted up with virtually no effort, much unlike the GM column, which is supposed to be the same as stock.

The lower bracket on the Mustang column is made of 1" thick steel, with two "ears" on it. One of the ears conflicted with the brake pedal. So, I cut it off. Now, all I need to do is make up a bracket to hold the bottom end of the column. This can use the remaining ear and the bolt hole on the top of the lower bracket. Since the Mustang column doesn't have it's shell extend all the way thru the floor like the GM column does, I can't use the original Jeep floor bracket. No big deal. Also, the Mustang weather seal for the column at the firewall looks like it will work just fine.

Now, at this point, everything was going okay, except for one thing. Somehow, during the move back to Washington, I lost the key for the car. Cute. So, I needed to remove the old key cylinder and replace it with one that has a key.

The book says to drill out the small release pin, then break off the winged part of the cylinder (that the key goes thru), then drill out the cylinder itself.

Yeah, right. I broke the potmetal housing when I tried that.

So, now at that point, I had a 1990 Mustang steering column that needs something done with the steering wheel (due to the large hole left over from the airbag) and a broken key cylinder unit. I broke down and bought a different steering column, deciding that it would be cheaper. I cross-checked the part numbers of the switches on the column, and found that the latest part number was a 1986. Checking with someone who had an interchange manual, told me that the 1986 has a different column than the 1987-1989 cars. This cross-checks in my mind, as if you're familiar with the Mustangs, you know that starting in 1987, the Mustang dash changed to the pod-style.

I looked for compatible columns in several Ford and Mercury products, but the Mustang is the only car that had a compatible column that didn't have a column shifter for an automatic transmission. Finally, I found one in a 1988 Mustang LX. There's at least three different flavors of Mustang, and only the the LX and the GT have the cruise control switches in the steering wheel. I needed this, due to the fact that there's some strange stuff that goes on, as only three wires carry the horn and the five cruise control functions from the steering wheel to the rest of the wiring harness.

As a bonus, this new column has the tilt fuction.

Okay, enough about the steering column already.

To use the steering box, I needed a mounting bracket. I was going to use stock mounting brackets (that was assuming that they'd fit the larger box), but then I remembered something else that I'd done. Since I moved the front axle forward when I put on the new front suspension, the steering box needed to move forwards. If I'd only moved the axle an inch or so, it probably wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that when I moved the axle forward by three inches, it put the axle tube under the end of the pitman arm if the steering box was mounted in the stock location. The end result is that under compression, the axle will strike the pitman arm. This didn't seem very good to me. Also, from what I've seen, the stock brackets are kinda flimsy. So, I made my own out of steel plates and flat bar stock.

Before I started cutting steel, I made a mock-up out of some thin scrap plywood I had laying around. This clued me in to a lot of strange fitment problems early on, like the strange shape needed to fit inside the front cross member (which widens as it gets away from the frame rail). I glued on some small blocks of wood the size and shape of the bar stock I would be using, and drilled all the holes. This mock-up really simplified coming up with a design that didn't have any conflict between the steering box bolts and the frame bolts.

I cut four pieces of plate; a side piece, a top horizontal piece that goes under the front crossmember, a gusset to go between the first two, and a piece that goes under the frame rail and is welded to the outside surface of the side plate. Two long pieces of bar stock got welded to the inside of the side plate. Holes go thru the bar stock and side plate for the steering box. Most of the aftermarket brackets that I've seen use short pieces of tubing for spacers. I'm not sure that's the best way to go, so that's why I used some 5/8" by 1" bar stock (this is the minimal thickness that keeps the box from bottoming out against the side plate). The top piece of bar stock turned out to be 5" long, and the lower piece is 7" long. To me, bar stock is not only a whole lot easier to weld on and get right than tubing (I have very limited fabrication facilities, so accurately cutting and squaring four short pieces of tubing isn't much of a possibility), it also strikes me as being a stronger design, since the long pieces of bar stock will act as strengthening ribs.

With the steering box mounted in it's final position with a handfull of grade-8 bolts and lock washers, I proceeded on to the intermediate shaft.

I had two shafts to work from; the Jeep one that came with the body, and the Buick one that came with the steering box. Both shafts are two-piece, "double-D" rod inside a "double-D" tube, and allow an amount of parts mixing. Here's the snag: The Jeep shaft, although the right length, had the wrong ends. The Buick shaft had the right ends, but was about 6" too short.

The steering column end of both shafts use a bell joint. However, the assembly on the Jeep shaft was retained with a snap ring, but the Buick unit uses four bent-over fingers. Since the internals of the joint were the same, I swapped the bell from the Buick shaft onto the rod section of the Jeep shaft. Using the tube section of the Buick shaft on the steering box, I now had an intermediate shaft. Almost. The two pieces only fit together by about 1/8". If I wiggled the steering column, the parts fell apart.

The Buick tube uses a rag joint and then a small splined coupler on the steering box. The Jeep tube uses a U-joint and a large splined coupler. Since the joints are so different, there's no swapping parts here. Instead, I cut off the Buick's rod and put that into the Buick's tube, cut the Jeep's rod, and used the double-D section of the Jeep's tube to go over the rods and splice them together. This is a very temporary solution, as I don't like the idea of the splice real well, and the angle on the rag joint is pretty steep for that kind of joint. However, for now, I can check clearances (I found that I had to cut down a couple of bolts on the left-hand spring tower), and I know exactly what length I need and that I need some kind of universal joint on the front end of the shaft. Guess another trip to the junkyard is in order.

After the steering box is finally mounted, there's two projects left on the steering setup in addition to finding a better intermediate shaft solution; I need to finish the draglink/tie rod setup, and I'm going to build one of those crossover steering box braces. I'm building the brace, since none of the ones I've seen on the market would fit with my far-from-stock steering and suspension setup. Those braces sure seem like good insurance to me.

* Note: My friend Lars had a really nifty recommendation for the steering box brace. It seems that the fat end of a Chevy smallblock connecting rod fits the pitman shaft area of the steering box casting. This would greatly simplify making a brace, as the steering box end of the crossover brace is the hardest to fab up. It shouldn't be too hard to find an old rod somewhere.

The last piece of the steering setup that I'll need to work on is the draglink and tie rod. The front axle came off of a truck that had the ram-assist-type power steering. I ended up with the tie rod, the ram, and the drag link section that ran from the tie rod to the power steering coupler. The tie rod has two fat areas that have tapered holes in them; one hole for the drag link and one for the power ram. My current plans are to use the tie rod by replacing the worn-out joint on the driver's side and cutting off the cast-in one on the passenger side and replacing it with an adjusting sleeve and rod end like on the other end. Whatever I use for a drag link will probably be connecting into the old power ram hole, as it looks like that will set the length of the drag link as being about the same as the track bar (making these the same angle and length to eliminate bump steer). With adjustable ends at both ends of the tie rod, I can twist the rod around so that the drag link hole is facing whatever direction I want. The remaining hole will probably work for a steering stabilizer.

Another thing that I'm working out on the steering is putting the tie rod on top of the steering knuckles. From the factory, the Bronco knuckles had the tie rod on the bottom. I'm debating if spending $118 for an 8-degree reamer that I'll only use on two holes is worth the cost. (I wish I'd thought about this before I put the knuckles on, but even taking the knuckles to a machine shop would run me about the same as buying a reamer and doing it myself.) The reason for the tie rod flip, is that it tucks the tie rod up about 3" higher than it would be otherwise. Not only does this get it up higher, where it's less likely to hit something off road, but it helps flatten out the drag link angle. Yeah, I could do the Chevy flattop-knuckle-and-custom-steering-arms thing, but not only is that expensive, I couldn't find much in the way of Chevy parts around Dallas, when I was working on the front axle. Also, there's another issue with the steering that comes from the front suspension; since my front suspension requires a track bar, I need to take into consideration that ideally, the drag link should be the same length and angle as the track bar to prevent bump-steer. (Check here to see more: The Jeep's Suspension.)

* Note: The cost of the reamer is starting to justify itself to me more and more. The pitman arm that's on the steering box I got is nice and beefy, but has a really small hole in the tie rod end (there's plenty of material around it for safely making the hole a little bigger). So, now I'm up to three, maybe four 8-degree holes that need to be reamed. If I get to five, the reamer's cost is fully justified.

After all that work getting the steering box mounted up, I stood back and took a really good look at things, and found a problem; the end of the pitman arm was at the same height as the tie rod. Where this becomes a problem is that at that point, the front suspension was at full droop. So, once a load was put on the front suspension, the suspension setup at that point would have put the pitman arm below the tie rod. Not good. I tried pivoting up the steering box by leaving the top front bolt in place, raising the rear of the steering box, and redrilling the rest of the holes. (The results of this are in the pictures above.)

This helped, but then I noticed another problem. The end of the pitman arm was too far back. With the kind of front suspension I have on the Jeep, the front axle will move forward a bit when it's compressed from full droop to the at-rest position. The end result is that with the setup I had at that point, loading the front end would make the tie rod just hit the end of the pitman arm.

Okay, it's re-engineering time.

The steering box that I have has a lot of mounting "ears" on it. Depending upon what vehicle the box would go in and the mounting style (inside the frame rail or outside the frame rail), different ears would be drilled and tapped. I found that if I cut off one of the undrilled ears that was on the top right of the box, that the top of the box would fit up inside the front crossmember. This allows moving the box up about 2". Perfect clearance, and it also puts a better angle on the intermediate shaft, in addition to providing clearance between the intermediate shaft and two of the bolts holding on the left front spring tower. Also, this still leaves the hose connections to the power steering pump out where I can get at them; just behind the front crossmember.

This new mounting position for the steering box required a nearly total re-working of the mounting plate. I first ground off the spacer bars that I had welded on (not a quick process), then welded on new ones in the right places and re-drilled the mounting holes in the right spots. Then, I cut off the inch or so of the bottom of the plate, as now the plate was extending too far down.

Up to this point, everything was just fine. Where the next problem came in is that top bolt for the steering box had it's head colliding with the inside of the frame rail. (With the old mounting, this bolt was just below the frame rail.) Initially, I saw two solutions to this problem. One was to drill a hole in the inside surface of the frame rail that's just big enough to accept the head of the bolt. The second possibility was to drill a smaller hole that's just big enough for the bolt thru both sides of the frame rail. Then, I could cut a spacer to go inside the frame rail to keep it from collapsing, and then use a longer bolt.

The latter route is the one I decided to take. It weakens the frame rail less (one 7/16" hole in each side of the frame rail, versus about a 1" hole in one), and it also makes for a nice way to partially bolt the steering box directly to the frame. (Pictures are on their way!) Other than cutting the front crossmember, I can't see any way to get the steering box any higher.

Of course, after getting all this put together, I just had to play with it. I found that the rag joint is binding just a bit. (Rag joints don't seem to like having more than about 10 degrees of angle on 'em.) I think I can make some adjustments to the joint to fix this, or, if I go with my original plans of finding a different intermediate shaft, I'll get one that uses a U-joint instead of a rag joint on the steering box end.

The end result puts the end of the steering box about 1/16" from the front bumper. No big deal. With the bumper and steering box being so close together, I can easily build a skid plate for the steering box that is either welded or bolted strongly to the front bumper.

Enough with all of that part of the steering. Notice yet that I still don't have a power steering pump yet?

If you're astute enough, you may have noticed that the Mustang that I pulled the engine out of had a power steering pump attached to it. Here's part one of the saga of the power steering pump adventure: That pump won't work with the steering box.

The reason is that the Mustang used a rack-and-pinion power steering. This requires a lower pressure and lower flow volume than a recirculating ball steering box (such as the Saginaw I'm using). Not to mention, the Mustang was using a Thomson pump, which has a plastic body (remember, I'm thinking durability and repairability all the time on this Jeep), so there's three reasons I don't want this pump.

Not a big deal; just another trip to the junkyard. Except, now I'm back in Washington. Tacoma doesn't have the big string of big junkyards like you can find in the Dallas suburb of Grand Prarie, so parts are a little more pricey, and the selection isn't quite there. No problem; I just need to be patient and keep looking.

After scouring web sites for ideas, I was pointed to use a Saginaw pump or a big Thomson from an F-series truck. The F-series trucks used a recirculating ball steering box, so one of those pumps would match the steering box, but the bigger Thomsons still have a plastic body. No problem; I'd use a Saginaw. Except that the big Saginaws didn't come with a pulley that would work with the Ford serpentine belt, and the Thomson pumps have a different shaft size than the Saginaws, so I can't use the Thomson pulley on the Saginaw pump. Fine. Per InterNet directions, I'll use a GM pulley. No big deal. I rounded up the parts and tried to mount them on the engine (I also grabbed a serpentine idler pulley for a Ford smallblock truck without A/C).

Of course, Murphy's law kicked in, and the parts wouldn't fit; power steering saga part two, here I am.

Why, didn't the parts fit? It's because the different pumps use radically different mounting, and the bracketry that supports the power steering pump and the A/C pump are very different. Luckily, the Ford E-series full-sized vans used a Saginaw pump; they're shorter front-to-back and the fill is straight up, instead of leaning back, so they work in the tight confines of the van engine compartment. I located one, and got the bracket, bolts, and the steering pump pulley. Now, everything bolted up. Almost.

The next problem was that the GM pulley, being just a bit smaller than the Ford, routed the serpentine belt against the accessory bracket. I was glad I had picked up the Ford pulley, and I soon had it painted and swapped out. Why did I paint it? Because it was painted black from the factory, and I want all light colors under the hood, because I find it easier to trace oil leaks when they're not against a black background. (If you've read through most of this site, you'll know that for some reason, I have gone through my entire life never having a flashlight with a good bulb and good batteries, so I prefer to have light colors under the hood. That's why the underside of the hood is painted silver.)

Click to see my costs so far.

The Rest of the Steering

We'll just have to see what happens. I'll update this page as I figure stuff out/get stuff done.

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