Steering Box

[Oli]

Hello

New here, very interesting forum and knowledgable poeple around here!

I am after new parts for the steering box. I would like to replace the worm and gear with

new parts, is there a source for those parts?

Thanks for any help

Oli

[busycoupe]

Lares will rebuild your  steering box.  Rock Auto sells the Lares service for $331. 

Edited March 7, 2019 by busycoupe

[James_Douglas]

90% of the time all it needs is a new sector shaft busing and a seal. Then properly adjust it according to the good book and it is good to go.

 

The entire reason for the hourglass shape of the Gemmer Worm gear is so that wear can be accounted for.

 

James.

[ptwothree]

Ford used the same Gemmer box. Different housing. '41 to '48 have very similar worm and sectors.  Looks like the gasket and bearing sets are the same too.The worm can be pressed off and a new one pressed on.  I haven't seen these Ford parts in person but I'd check with a restoration parts house just to compare.  You might want to post your location as the people on this forum have spares you might be able to make a deal with.

 

I just went thru mine and took two boxes and make one good one.  

[Dan Hiebert]

Rebuild kit is available from a few sources, I got one from Andy Bernbaum that included the sector shaft seal and bearing, and worm gear bearings and races.  NOS gear and worm may be hard to find.  I had to replace the sector shaft, and both the gear and worm were galled, but what is now AMS Obsolete had NOS parts.  This was 6 years ago, and I got the last (at the time) worm gear and shaft, and one of two sector shafts available.  I needed both the shafts, but the gears are probably a bit easier to find.  A phone call is best way to find out if they have what you need, they have scads of NOS and excellent used parts.  AB may have them, they didn't when I needed them but referred me to AMS (Mitchell at the time), AB would be worth a phone call, too.  As with AMS, they have parts that aren't in their catalog.  Info for both is in the Links Directory.    

[James_Douglas]

On ‎3‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 1:42 AM, ptwothree said:

Ford used the same Gemmer box. Different housing. '41 to '48 have very similar worm and sectors.  Looks like the gasket and bearing sets are the same too.The worm can be pressed off and a new one pressed on.  I haven't seen these Ford parts in person but I'd check with a restoration parts house just to compare.  You might want to post your location as the people on this forum have spares you might be able to make a deal with.

 

I just went thru mine and took two boxes and make one good one.  

There is a very funny story about that...

 

So, when I was 10 about six months before my father died in 1970 dad told my mother that the "worm" gear in her beloved 1949 Desoto was bad and parts were no longer available. So they sold the car to a collector who put it in a closed dry shop with 20 other cars for decades...

 

When I was 15 I had a Ford Model "A" coupe. It was a hot rod project that I had purchased. It had a Ford Gemmer Steering box in from a late '40 ford truck.  I took that box apart and the worm gear was worn. I looked at a neighbors Hollander Interchange book and saw that a bunch of different years Ford used the gear.  So, this is about 1975 and I head down into the little farming town I grew up in and go to the Ford Dealers Parts Desk.

 

I ask the kid at the counter if he has a worm gear for a 1948 Ford truck. He immediately says we don't have parts for that far back. I hear a grunt from a older man at the rear of the parts counter room who stands up and says, "wait a minute".  I hear him go up into the loft above the parts counter. About 10 minutes later he walks up to the counter with an arm full of worm gears with the shafts.  He looked over mine and sorts through them and says, "here you go this is the one".

 

Turns out that the apple farmers tended to wipe out there steering boxes in the soft soil of the orchards and they used to always carry a number of spare parts for them.  The kid says what do I charge him as it is not in the system. He tell the kid, "what does the tag say". It was $5 or something like that. So that is what I paid.

 

I went home and told mom how I had gotten a new steering gear for $5. I then told her is was the exact same gear that was needed for her beloved Desoto. She got so mad and said if that God Dammed Greek Sea Captain father of yours was still alive, I would kill him!  She really loved that car.

 

Of course the story does not end there.  In 2010 I managed to get the car back. It had been sitting since the day that they sold it in the back of that shop. The irony in the story. When I took it apart the steering gears looked fine.  The front right king pin was worn a lot and that is what the steering problem was.  Any shop could have fixed it in no time.

 

Mom died in 1985. She would never would know that dad just wanted "the old car" gone.  I smiled when I managed to get second in my class at Hillsborough a couple of years back. She would have loved that.