My '73 Electra is in need of a new steering box soon. The car is all over the place and there's fluid dripping off of the bottom of the box after driving around town. I see tons of info on the A-body box upgrades but haven't stumbled across any info for us big guys. So does anyone have any ideas on a good box to get that isn't going to cost $500 like them new fangled ones in the promotional magazines. I'd like it to be as close to a bolt in swap as possible. I'm not afraid of using home made hoses or adapters if needed, but don't want to have to deal with custom pumps and brackets if it can be avoided.
Have you checked with powersteering.com to see what it would cost to rebuild your old one? It might be worth the call or email.
It's a daily driver so I'd need to buy a different one to go into the car while mine gets rebuilt. It's easier just to replace it in my case.
Try Borgason steering gear boxes. put a new one in my riv and it works great. even upgraded to a new quick ratio one. drives like a new car.
I could be wrong,but I think those boxes are interchangeable with the A body's, I guess you guy's can correct me,it's been a long time that I have looked at a big car steering box.If they are the same,I have a good one for you,fairly reasonable.BrunoD.
I have a 70-72 A body box in my '68 Wildcat. It's a direct bolt in. Nice to no longer have 3 1/2 turns lock to lock!
Every place I looked said the A-bodies and the big cars use different boxes. Even aftermarket universal ones list different part numbers. I'm leaning towards the Lares 972/974 box.
I ended up with one of the Lares quick ratio boxes. It's very tight but still very managable. Basically it makes the car feel as heavy as it is, but it can still be driven with 1 hand. The install was a pain in the butt, and you need to use the supplied ragjoint because the input shaft is a different size than the stock one. The intermediate shaft refused to go back on even though the input shaft is shorter than factory. That's because the new ragjoint was alot thicker than the old one. In tight turns the power steering pump is straining to keep up. I expected that since it's the one finger steering pump for a big comfy car. It's really not setup for quick ratio steering on a 6k pound car. I figure I'll replace that next spring if it holds out that long. Overall I'm satisifed. Once I get the alignment right and relearn to drive the car I'll be very happy. It's nice not having 2" of play in the steering anymore.
Daily driver or hobby car? Have a look at your old original. Steering boxes are so easy to rebuild & reseal it's not even funny. Dirty job at first getting it cleaned up but nothing you can't do in a couple evenings on a bench. Only special tool you need is a bar/beam style torque wrench to check the load on the shaft once back together. I borrowed one from a friend. This is from an old '72 GS350 parts car I had. Variable rate, going into my '71 in the Spring.
Daily driver now that most of the bugs are worked out of it. It took me a year to get it to the point that it can go more than 5 miles without an issue. Now I'll start actually driving it on a regular basis. That's why it needed to get the box taken care of. the old one leaked from every seal to the point I had to top off the fluid every 25 miles. On top of that the steering wheel would move 1" in either direction before the wheels would react. It didn't feel even close to safe having a car that big be that unresponsive.
