Hi,

I have a 1986 G20 that was wrecked. The steering gear was broken so I replaced it with a salvage unit. This was a unique situation so without boring anyone with the details, an acquaintance brought me the steering gear that they got from salvage yard about two years ago and I just recently installed it. I zeroed the pitman shaft to center, and bolted it up to the frame but now it will only steer to the right and back to center. I've tried re-orienting the pitman arm on the shaft but the blind spline will not allow me to orient it in any usable manner. I am going to rebuild the rest of the steering system with new tie rods but they are not bent from the wreck, at least not noticeably or enough to cause such a severe change in the steering. It's actually steering farther right than it should, but the farthest left it will steer is to center.

I'm suspecting this steering gear is incorrect and that it's "stops" from right to left are not the same as the original. Unfortunately the old unit was thrown away long ago so I can't compare it, but I'm certain I visibly compared the original with the salvage unit before I threw the original out.

Going by this link How to Identify Your Steering Gear from Lee Power Steering it seems I have the Saginaw 708, and as far as I can tell it is correct for my two wheel drive 1986 G20. My salvage gearbox has four mounting holes, a threaded shaft, and it visibly matches with the picture on Lees' website. One thing I'm concerned with is the O-ring versus inverted flare connections (I'm going to check what lines I have in the morning weather permitting) but if I'm reading it right Lee offers a seal kit for people installing the 708 on pre 1980 vehicles. So in essence there is no difference in the left to right stops on any 708, only the shaft and the threaded fittings.

So now I'm wondering, am I way over thinking this? Did I do something really stupid? Is there a difference in 708 gear boxes and they actually have different stop positions depending on the vehicle they went into?

Thanks.

 

Could the box itself have been in a full left position (against the stop) already? Haven't done any real work involving the box myself so feel free to correct me if I'm assuming something wrong.

 

Hi,
Are you sure the pitman arm is in the correct keyed position? Was it already installed? does it match the old one?

If the box is centered, i would suspect the pitman arm being 90* off.

is that possible?

john

 

Thanks Beau, but I centered the gear box before I installed it.

And thanks John. The salvage unit came with the Pitman already on it. After I installed the gear box and discovered the issue I removed the pitman arm and tried orienting it in different positions but it has what Lee's website describes as "blind splines" so moving it to the next position would put it in an unusable position.

When it drys up I'm going to remove the gearbox for the third time and try this all again, hopefully tomorrow or Sunday.