mod@tech

Classic cars are never quite as good as we thought they were back when they were new. That 500-hp Chevelle you had in high school really only made 260, and it handled like dump truck. Add 40 to 50 years into the mix and it is bound to be significantly worse off for wear, especially the steering. Manual steering is not awful when properly set up, but when a manual gearbox gets some age on it, the slop comes in fierce. If your steering box has more than an eighth of a turn of play, then it might be time to rebuild it.

Rebuilding a manual steering gearbox is not difficult and is much cheaper than buying a new one. Plus, if you have a valuable classic, keeping the original versus installing a replacement maintains the value of the car. This was the situation for my 1966 Corvette, as I was keeping it stock. Instead of converting to power or rack and pinion, I opted to rebuild the original Saginaw manual gearbox with a kit from Borgeson (p/n 921039). The kit comes with everything you need to rebuild a worn gearbox including bushings, gaskets, bolts, and the most important parts: the worm and sector gears.

This is a recirculating ball gearbox, which is essentially a giant double-grooved ball bearing assembly. The worm gear—the part of the gearbox that is connected to the input shaft—is a machined block that has the gear teeth on one side and two machined grooves inside the block. Metal ball bearings ride inside the block, providing the bearing surface for the grooved input shaft. As you turn the steering wheel, the bearings spiral through the worm gear block, moving the block up or down the input shaft. This movement is translated to the sector gear, which is attached to the pitman arm. As the ball bearings roll on the shaft, worm block, and each other, each component slowly wears down. This is where the slop comes from.

Eventually, you have to turn the wheel to take up the extra space that is left behind from the wear. This can become significant and that is dangerous situation. Yes, you can compensate for the play, but this also leads to lane drifting as the steering system will wander left and right without the tension inside the gearbox. The solution is a complete rebuild with a new sector and worm gear assembly.

To do this rebuild, you need a few specialty tools, mainly a small shop press, seal drivers, and an inch-pound torque wrench. If you want to replace every bearing race, then you need a Kent-Moore J-5288 and J-5755 bearing cup puller/installer tool, but this is not necessary in most cases and you can reuse the original races. In fact, the instructions state to only remove the races if necessary. We used a gallon of Carb Dip for the small parts and a five-gallon bucket with diesel fuel to clean the case. All of the old grease needs to come out, considering it has a lot of grit and metal shavings in it that will reduce the life of the replacement components.

Aside from the cleaning, the entire rebuild process takes a couple of hours. I let my parts soak overnight to get them clean, but you could put in some more elbow grease and get the job done in a couple more hours. With the rebuild, the 1966 Corvette steering box is nice and tight like it should be, set to factory specs, and ready to be reinstalled into the car.

This worn gearbox came off a 1966 Corvette. I wanted to keep the original case, so I decided to rebuild it with a kit from Borgeson.

The sector gear preload screw requires a flat blade screwdriver and a 5/8-inch wrench. The nut was loosened and then the preload screw can be turned. The three bolts holding the cap to the body were removed and then the set screw is used to push the cap off the sector gear shaft.

Inside the gearbox, you can see the mesh of the sector and worm gears. Most of the wear is not between these gears, but rather inside the worm block.

Next, I used a screwdriver to knock off the retainer ring on the input shaft cap. If you have a very large crescent wrench, that will work, but this is how most of us get the job done.

The nut on the cap is too large for our wrenches, so I used my Channellock pliers. This is not under much tension, so there is very little risk of damage, and the cap should come off with minimal effort.

Once the cap is off, the input shaft comes out by spinning it until the worm gear walks completely off the sector gear. The sector gear will then slide out.

Inside the worm gear are a bunch of ball bearings. This is where the slop comes from. Over time, these bearings wear on each other, the worm block, and the input shaft. This is replaced as an assembly with the Borgeson kit.

Moving to the case, I used a pry bar to remove the input shaft seal.

Then to the press with a 15/16-inch socket and a long extension to drive out the two bushings. These are about an inch and a half long each, so it can be done in one pressing.

The new bushings from the kit get installed with the press as well, but I seated them with a seal driver to make sure they were flush with the inner lip.

The same goes for the inner bushing.

My new output seal is slightly different from the original, which has an exposed metal ring on top. The new seal is all rubber and has a raised lip, so I used a socket instead of a seal driver.

I also replaced the seal on the input shaft cap.

I packed the bearings by hand with new #2 lithium grease. There are two bearings, one on each side of the input shaft.

I also lubed the shaft before loading it into the case.

To seal the threads, I used liquid thread sealant on the input shaft cap. This is required, otherwise grease will eventually work its way into the threads and could cause the cap to loosen, which would be very bad.

I lightly tapped an 18mm socket onto the input shaft, just enough that it stays in place by itself. This is so I can set the preload.

With the worm gear at the end of the travel (all the way at the bottom of the case away from the input shaft) and then back a half turn, I tightened the input shaft cap until the input shaft rotational torque is 5 to 8 in-lb. You need to tighten the cap until it makes contact, and then a little more and rotate the shaft back and forth to seat the bearings, then set the preload.

Once the preload was set, I threaded on the retainer ring and tapped it tight.

Then I tapped the ring in two places with a punch to lock it in place.

I installed the new sector shaft into the case ensuring that the center tooth of the sector gear was in the center groove of the worm gear. Then I filled the entire case with 11 ounces of #2 Lithium grease. You may need to hold the case upside down so the worm gears fall towards the opening to assist the initial meshing of the gears. Do not overfill the case; doing so will blow the seals as the pressure builds inside the case from use.

The sector gear cap got a new gasket and little wipe of grease to pre-lube the bushing (this is the original bushing, which is not replaced as part of this kit).

The preload screw slides into the sector shaft and is then threaded into the cap to pull the cap into place so it can then be bolted down with the new supplied bolts.

The original set screw used a flat blade, but the new one is a more user-friendly Allen-head screw. Setting the pre-load requires an 18-mm socket on the input shaft as well. The set screw is backed all the way off, and then tightened one full turn. Check the rotational force with the torque wrench. This is torque reading #1.

Next, tighten the preload screw until the torque required to turn the input shaft is 4-10 in-lb higher than before.

The rebuilt gearbox is ready to be installed. I chose to wait until after the rebuild to paint the gearbox; this way I would not damage the new paint during the process.

Sources

Borgeson • 860-482-8283 • Borgeson.com

[Editor’s Note: Charles Steinman of Fairport, New York, wrote in with his recollections of his first car, a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite.]

I had always been a car nut but didn’t have an opportunity to own one while in high school. That changed between my first and second years of college, when my parents relented and let me bring a car back to school. Given the fact that they had no money to contribute to the purchase, I was relegated to buying something based on whatever money I could save up over the summer. Luck – although I’m not sure I would call it that later – would have it that a guy around the corner was selling a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite that met my two qualifications: It ran, some of the time; and I had the money to buy it.

Of course, you must have a decent sound system in your car and eight-tracks were all the rage then, so the first post-purchase project was the installation of a tape player. My father, although an incredibly handy guy, really didn’t know any more about cars than I did, but he figured we could put a few wires together. We followed the instructions and hooked it up. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that British cars of the time were positive ground and when I put a cartridge in the player, smoke came out of the defroster vents. It was the first step in a long learning process.

When the upstate New York weather turned cold, I found out that the heater didn’t work very well. Actually, it didn’t work at all. I brought the car home one weekend, and my dad and I tried to figure it out. It didn’t take long. Someone had removed the heater core and fan. A trip to the junk yard and a few hours of work sorted that out, although even after the installation was completed you could hardly notice if the heater was on or not. With our trusty Clymer manual at hand, we learned how to do oil changes, brakes, tune-ups, and even a complete engine overhaul when the main bearings finally gave out.

The Sprite’s last gasp was on a trip back from visiting my brother in Vermont. The wind got a hold of my top and ripped it in half. I was 350 miles away from home and had to drive it back in the rain with a towel and a pith helmet over my head, all while wiping the rain off the inside of the windshield. You’d be amazed at the looks you get on the New York State Thruway when you’re dressed like that. I sold the Sprite and replaced it with a considerably less troublesome Triumph TR-4A, with my dad helping me to keep that running, too.

Fast forward a few years and my father asked me to join him at an address not too far from his house. I assumed he wanted me to help him with his job, and when I arrived there was a stunning red 1971 MG B in the driveway. He asked me what I thought of it. I said it was really nice, but why was he asking? He looked at me like the idiot I was and said, “What makes you think that all those years I was helping you with your cars I didn’t want a sports car of my own? I couldn’t afford it then because I had to put you through college and law school. Now it’s my turn.”

He and my mother loved that car, and I later gave him my Porsche 914 for a more weather-resistant driving experience. It was followed by a host of others, most notably, his last car, a double-black 1967 Chevrolet El Camino with a 327 and a console-shift automatic. We went to many car shows together, he with his El Camino and me in one of a series of Porsches. Those were magical times for us. My dad has been gone for many years now, but every time I break out the tools he left me – to work on the latest project car – the memories come back to me, and I smile.

[If you’d like to share your own stories of automotive adventures, hijinks, and collecting for Reminiscing, email us at editorial@hemmings.com. The more pictures to help tell the stories, the better.]

While its Carrozzeria Zagato coachwork doesn’t share the sinewy curves of racing and roadgoing Maseratis of the 1950s and 1960s, the Biturbo-based Spyder ’90 has crisply concise lines with a modern-classic appeal all their own. This executive express was made even more stylish by trading the fixed steel roof of its 222SE counterpart for a folding cloth top, and it carried none of the “more expensive LeBaron” baggage of the contemporary Chrysler’s TC by Maserati.

Late-production examples like this 1990 Spyder ’90 enjoyed notable improvements over earlier models that included a larger 2.8-liter, 225-hp V-6 with water-cooled twin turbochargers, 15 x 7-inch alloy wheels, redesigned bumpers, and additional body-color trimmings. This Rosso Red over Grigio car is equipped with the optional ZF four-speed automatic transmission and slender, European-spec bumpers.

The seller notes:

The cabin features electrically controlled reclining sport bucket seats upholstered in gray leather with sueded side bolsters. Complimentary Alcantara extends to the dashboard, center console, and door panels. Burled Elm high gloss wood trim compliments the shift knob, parking brake handle, dash, and door panels. Amenities include a Maserati-branded 24 carat gold clock, automatic climate control, a Kenwood AM/FM/CD stereo, and power windows, mirrors, and door locks.

In 1994 there was a right front end collision. The car was sold to the insurance company. The insurance company sold it unrepaired. In 1996 the owner started the repairs then ended up selling it to a body shop owner. A new right front fender, hood, radiator, AC condenser, radiator cooling fans, intercoolers, tie rod and European spec bumpers were ordered and shipped directly from Italy. The car exterior was completely sanded in preparation for a very high-quality exterior paint application matching the original factory color. Additionally- a factory improved fuse box, upgraded hood insulation, oil pan protector plate, and Nardi wood steering wheel were installed.

There has been no paint chipping or required touchups since then. There are no scratches penetrating the paint showing the primer or the metal. All exterior stainless-steel trim still shows a deep shine.

This Spyder was entered in many car shows and won a Blue-Ribbon Award at the 2002 Detroit Concours show. This car is driven regularly, including over 400 miles in the past month. It is not a show car now- but not far off.

See more Maseratis for sale on Hemmings.com.

Date: 1977

Location: Baltimore, Maryland

Source: Jack E. Boucher, via Historic American Engineering Record / Library of Congress

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