Just replaced my steering box. (1998 24V 2wd auto). DOes anybody know what the spec is as far as how much play there should be in the input to the steering box...before the pitman arm moves?. I had my son move my steering and it appears that the steering shaft would move about 45 to 60 degrees before I see movement at the pitman arm... This is after I adjusted the tightening screw... When I adjusted it I think it went in quite a bit before I felt any kind of snugness telling me to stop. Do you think the bearing preload adjustment was not correct? My understanding is that there are only two places to get play in a steering box,..one is the preload on the bearing, the other is the over center screw adjustment.??????????????

EDIT: the slop is less than 45 to 60 degrees. It's actually about 20 or 30 degrees.. But..shouldn't it be zero?

I would appreciate any input on this. It's driving me nuts. I am starting to think I got a defective steering box.

The box I got was an autozone one, the heavy duty one for the 8800 lb weight. I don't tow and it's all street miles..no off road.

 

The remans from the parts stores don't have very tight tolerances. Had the same problem with a Napa unit. You can tighten them up a bit sometimes, 1/8 turn at a time. It will bind if too tight.

 

What Gorms said.............. Rebuilds are sometimes worse than what you took off.