Do you remember if the output shaft is supported ONLY by the brass bush, and by the thread in the cover plate?
I only stripped mine as far as the seals. There might have been one on the forum, but might have been lost in one of the previous crashes
It has a bushing inside the long nose bit opposite the cover. And then the bushing in the cover which is in my picture. The screw simply pushes the end of the steering box output shaft towards the input shaft. As the bushings wear the output shaft moves sideways into the bushing in the cover leaving steps in one side opposite the input shaft. What I did with a Dremel was to grind out the bushing in the side plate using the output shaft jammed into a new bushing as a reference and then hammer the new bushing into the hole. A machine shop could do this far more accurately. I am pretty pleased with the results as the box lost most of its slop.
Are you saying the casting around the bush gets worn away, Mike? Think that might be @volkswombat 's problem. Something's been eating his steering box case.
Its the bushing that wears and allows the output shaft to slop sideways. Its cast into the cover plate and it has lots of protrusions cast into the alloy, as I discovered when I unfortunately managed to successfully remove it. At which point there was no way back.
Anyway, the shoulder (by my finger) on the output shaft Has chewed up this rib inside the case I suspect this happened at the machine shop, I can't see how even a very badly adjusted box could end up like that. Plan is to Dremel the *****ed bit, then reassemble and hope for the best
Not sure , some research has suggested some boxes were a little roughly made and had markings like rhat. Or, I noticed that that particular area sits at a lower point in the box and would of been the area doing the grinding and chewing of the buggered bit ......
The brass bushings are the bearings. The shaft you are holding looks like some welding was done on it, And the chewing comes from that. Not an issue as the aluminium housing is not the bearing. And if the shaft doesnt rattle around. Mine did as the bushing in the cover had about 0.5mm play in it and the long one in the nose tapered out to match when it all should have been parallel...
I'm think the blueing us from manufacture, there's another spot on a different part. No sign of any welding at all. @mikedjames you're right the cover plate brass bush is worn, heavily scored, but I'm going to leave it , I'm fed up of getting in deeper than I need to and need to get this done. Got the chewed up bit cleaned up with Dremel, not great but better than it was free photo hosting Everything cleaned up including bearing races, was a lot of Marmite in there so stripped it all and flushed it out. Just need to reassemble and hope the bloody thing still works and doesn't leak