Loren

No offense taken. I am a week or two from having mine apart and then I can be on more solid ground. My experience has been solely on the Gemmer box. Professionally the cars I worked on were all rack and pinion setups and that is a different kettle of fish altogether. The one in my car is in very good shape, it just leaks. Perhaps I am missing something and will be able to see it right away. Its always easier when you can put your hand on it.

The last kit I bought for my 29 Model A I got from Macs to rebuild a 1953-56 F 100 pickup box. The price was $299.99 and it came with everything I needed. To adapt the pickup box to a Model involves lots of engineering and machine work…way too much to describe here. But I learned a few things, the steering gears were made by Gemmer for Ford for U.S. models and Ingersoll for Canadian models. I would be curious if one of our members has one loose that they can see if it has a name cast on the side. If Gemmer made them its likely the parts could be made to fit. The parts I have seen sure look like the F 100 parts which are readily available. Sounds like a worthy project for investigation.

Okay lets try to state this another way. A worm gear is essentially a thread. In a steering gear that thread is curved to the radius of the sector’s movement. The roller on the sector is not really a nut or even a half nut. It basically contacts the worm with one of its three teeth on a very limited area when everything is perfect. Start getting wear or damage and the other two teeth start getting involved. Only its more complicated than that because of helix angle of the sector. One of the out board teeth will be over center and the other will be under center. Add to that those outboard teeth are in contact with the adjacent teeth on the worm and because the center tooth is worn ( or in contact with a worn worm tooth ) it is putting them out of position. Someone wanting to adjust out the wear will screw down the sector adjustment and that makes the whole thing worse. Bottomline: The way to fix it is a new set of worm, sector roller, bushings and bearings.

Yes it is the whole thing. I don’t need one so I didn’t investigate further but one could ask if they could ( for a fee of course ) send you just the differential carrier. They seem to want to work with their customers. I spotted a rare 6 volt positive ground Delta Mark Ten CDI in a photo and inquired about it. They set up a buy-it-now auction and emailed me when it went live so I could buy it and not violate ebay rules. A carrier should weigh about what an O.D. Transmission does and the shipping for me was only $95. Bottomline, stuff is out there if people will look for it. What I have seen is crazy ads for odd parts, yet they show you the whole car from several views. The idea being to start a dialog with buyers so they will inquire about other parts. You’ve got to love this hobby!

If the middle part of the worm is worn so much that the teeth are binding rather than turning the sector that would explain the behavior you are describing. The only fix would be to change the worm and the sector roller. The problem is the vertical sector shaft requires an oil seal to keep the oil in. Once the seal dies nobody ever checks the steering gear oil and it goes metal to metal. There is also the possibility of something bent. I had a Mercedes that had a steering gear that just did not feel right. I tried adjusting it and finally I saw the imprint of the right front upper ball joint in fender liner above the wheel! The 90+ year old driver must have clobbered a curb. Once I changed the steering gear it was much happier.

Here we have lots of opinions all have some merit. I personally favor keeping the stock rear end. Its a good design and changing it won’t give you more power or reliability. I just saw a fellow asking for help figuring out what kind of brakes his car had because no one told him when he bought it. On axle ratios if you are going to drive highway speeds you’ll want the lowest numerical ratio. The lowest numerical ratio in the stock rear axle is 3.54 ( I have heard of a 3.23 but have never seen one ). The 4.1 ratio you have usually came in cars with an Overdrive transmission. That is a super desirable item so take a real good look at that car. Overdrive with a 3.73 is a real good combination. If anyone is looking for a 3.54, French Lake has one in a 56 DeSoto on ebay. You might ask if they have an Overdrive as the last one I bought from them was $250 plus $95 shipping. Anyway that’s what I’d be doing. Overdrive transmissions should be left in gear out of Overdrive when parked and the parking brake kept in good condition. I found a solution to the iffy parking brake issue. Speedway Motors has a special valve that gives you 4 wheel parking brakes. You push down on the brake pedal and pull on a knob that holds the brake pressure.

I am out of town right now but I know its in their catalog. The counter guys can look it up.

Usually the ratio is stamped on the flat under the filler plug. The exact location, orientation and size of the stamps does vary as they were hand stamped.

I have two Model A Fords, a 29 and a 31. The 31 has a Gemmer box from a F 100 pickup. The thing is not adjusted right, its too tight. The 29 had a very worn out stock steering gear and after evaluating it I found it hopeless. 29-30 Model As use the gas tank for the top mount of the column. If your steering gear is bad then cracks form in the tank leaking fuel on the driver’s legs. Happily this one is the only model that has a separate gas tank from the cowl so I didn’t have to paint the whole car to fix it. Not to dive too deep in Fords, the steering gear in my 49 P17 is pretty much the same design. The sector goes downward instead of sideways but they work the same. What I have learned from the F 100 Pickup Gemmer box is that the tapered roller bearings are the first and most important adjustment. Tapered roller bearings require some preload ( more when new ). Most of the slop you get in the steering is from a lack of preload on those bearings. However, make them too tight and it will steer like my 31. Hard to turn and the spring back after completing a turn is not quite right. Sector adjustment on the top is not the way to remove slop. In fact I’d say leave it alone. If you look at the gear and sector, it is basically a “worm gear”. The worm is curved to accommodate the arc of the sector. The worm of course will wear at the straight ahead point ( in the middle or smallest diameter ). So if you monkey around with the sector adjustment to get the slop out while going straight the gears will be too tight at full or near full lock and they might even stick there in extreme cases. If you had the steering gear out of the car on the bench you could easily try it to see what I am saying. If you can detect any minute movement when pulling or pushing on the steering wheel, then those bearings are way out of adjustment. I am sure at the factory they used dial indicators and spring scales to adjust them. The first thing I did when I got my P17 was put some lube in the steering gear. Now the pittman arm is covered in oil….the seal leaks. So I resolved to replace the seal and adjust the preload on the tapered roller bearings. The price for a seal from the mail order suppliers is $35. NAPA sells a CR ( formerly known as Chicago Rawhide now owned by SKF ) seal for $12 and change. Yes it is in their catalog. I’ve got all the sheet metal off the front of my car and I had planned to replace the seal and take pictures and describe how it should be done. Take the pittman arm off, then the bolts from the sector cover. There is a T slot in the top of the sector which is engaged with the adjustment bolt. Do not loosen the adjustment! Just get the cover free from the housing and push the sector up until you can slide the cover off the sector. You can slide the sector completely out. Disconnect the horn wire from the relay ( on my 49 its a bullet connector ) and remove the cover from the steering shaft bearing. There are paper gaskets there that are the adjustment medium for the bearing. Be careful with them! You can remove one of the bearings and have a look at its condition. You can also see the worm gear from above. Very carefully separate one of the gaskets from the pack. There are three thicknesses. Try removing the thinest one first. Put the gaskets and cover back on and check the steering effort. Too tight, put the gasket back in. Still loose try putting the thin one back in and take out a thicker one. ( yes its that close ) Once you’re satisfied change the seal and drop the sector and cover back in. You can bolt everything up and add some lube. Take a drive and if you still think your steering is too sloppy you can try one space on the sector adjustment but that’s about all I would do. I assume the factory knew what they were doing. A couple of thoughts on alignment. Radial tires perform better with more caster than the old cars specified ( 7 degrees is mentioned ) Also the old Plymouths had very little if any toe-in. Most late model cars have much more. Toe-in contributes to holding straight line steering. So if you can give your alignment guy the factory specs and ask for a little more toe-in you might just eliminate the wander. I can almost guarantee the alignment guys will only set the toe.

The way I did it was to connect the OUT side to where the wipers originally connected on the manifold. Then the suction side to the wipers. This way the engine's vacuum contributes to the cause. You can confirm the inlet/outlets by starting the engine without any connections except the fuel.

Here's my take on a PCV setup. I used all common GM parts simply because they are available CHEAP. In these photos you will see the Road Draft Tube from my 49 P17. Not all Plymouths have the same parts. I have seen a single piece tube with a bolt holding it in place. This one has a filter and is in two pieces. What I like about is you can "put it back to stock" really quickly ( if that matters ). On mine the outlet pipe was spot welded in 4 places and there was a gap around it. I brazed the outlet pipe in to seal it. The GM grommet just pushes in and the rolled edge of the road draft tube holds in. When you push in the PCV valve it is locked in place very well. There is a groove inside the grommet that would lock the PCV valve in place but I suspect you'd never get it apart again once in the Road Draft Tube. NAPA P/N 630-1038 Grommet P/N 2-9220 PCV valve. The manifold photo shows the plug I spoke of earlier. The plug on the top surface of the runner to cylinders 5 & 6 is the vacuum connection for the wipers. Ideally you'd want to use the bigger connection for the PCV. There are alternatives of course. If you don't want to be boring holes in your nice manifold you can get a vacuum connection plate on eBay for a South Wind heater. They are made for just about every kind of one and two barrel carburetor. I have seen ones for your Stromberg WW for around $8.

In your photo ( at the top ) of the manifold, just under the choke inlet there's a boss. On my 49 ( single barrel ) manifold. that boss is drilled and tapped ( plugged however ) for the vacuum connection to the PCV. I don't know why they didn't drill and tap the later manifold but that is where it goes. I have the same manifold and it is not drilled either. Upon further inspection of my parts I found that somebody had milled the intake manifold at the ports by about an 1/8th of an inch! If I milled that much off the exhaust manifold it would not be good. The web between the adjacent ports would disappear. So I am going to spray weld the intake to build it back up. Since I am doing that I will skin the exhaust at the ports and the heat riser area, then spray weld them as well. Once the welding is done I can bolt them together and machine the port surface at the same time. Here's the photo of the "Emission Control Filter" from NAPA. This one is the most common GM type. It's hell getting old! they used to have them on a rack where you could pick through them. Now since carburetors are for antiques they put them in back on the shelves and you have to know what you want because the counter kids weren't born yet!

I am working on a Power-Pack manifold and Bendix-Stromberg WW carburetor as we speak. I found an Air Cleaner on eBay for a 1957 Plymouth V8 which uses a dry paper filter and fits the Stromberg. So because you asked I will go to NAPA and get that piece. ( photo to follow ) When I got my 52 Suburban it had two die cast hose fittings screwed to the top of the oil bath filter. It was a California car and I am guessing had been retro fitted with their version of PCV. Of course there was never any provision made for spare parts so if one thing is missing from a retro-fit kit it became non-functional. On an Oil bath the air passage creates a 180 degree corner the air has to go around. Centrifugal force causes dirt to land on the surface of the oil and become trapped. Most of the body of an oil bath filter is made up of a silencing chamber. The more posh Special Deluxe cars got the big filter and the cheapy Deluxe got the little filter. Since I've owned both I can tell you it is real noticeable. Carl Kiekhaefer in his NASCAR racing program carefully dyno tested his Chrysler engines looking for advantages, within the rules of course. The first phone call to Chrysler had to of been about oil bath air filters. At the top end they really robbed the engine of air flow and he would have noticed that right away. If you are going to use an oil bath I'd look over the diagrams in the download section. I have several 2 carb manifolds and considered using them with the Deluxe style oil bath air cleaners modified to use dry filters. That would allow the use of the side filter described above. They may be more efficient that way but they will be louder. I am hoping the 57 filter ( which has the silencing chamber ) will be silent.

The one on the far right with the hose connection should be plumbed to the air cleaner. Usually to the side of a dry filter housing. Most auto parts stores have a plastic part that goes in the inside with a piece of foam ( or other filter material ) that has a clip on the outside. The idea being it is not on the vacuum side of the paper filter. I made the mistake of piping a breather to my transmission ONCE, on the vacuum side and almost sucked all the lube out. The tip off was the cloud of oil smoke following the car at WOT. If you use a filter type filler cap, then the system is not considered "Closed". There has to be a vent ( into the crankcase ) as the engine at idle can build up a whole lot of vacuum and suck in the engine oil. With the filter I described above you have a "Closed" system as the engine vacuum sucks in the crankcase vapors ( when there is vacuum, like idle ) and the carburetor sucks them in under WOT conditions. Either way the blowby gets burnt. The point of the "Road Draft Tube" was to create a low pressure in the crankcase by the air passing under the car. The oil filler cap served to allow air to enter the crankcase to prevent oil being sucked out the road draft tube. Seems like such a no brainer that they should have been using PCV all along! But again I believe it was the General that discouraged automotive innovation in the post war era.

When they make the cores for the inside of the coolant area, they use wire to hold the cores together so they don't suffer "Core Shift." Some times they don't get all of the wire out. Some times they don't get all the sand out either! A friend got a real good deal on a new Edsel because it would only run on 7 cylinders. The factory hadn't gotten the sand out of one of the intake runners. Fast forward a few decades and another friend who worked at a Mercedes dealer said one of their cars had a blocked off runner in its intake manifold. So this is an on going issue with manufacturers. Here's a photo of a piece of cast iron I took out of a Chrysler Industrial 265 cylinder head.