Got the steering column put back together and tuned best I could for now. Reinstalled it back in the frame and ran in to an immediate problem - the nuts interfere with the Pittman arm! The pictures and video explain it all.
Today was an all-around busy day. Let's start with the steering. I sent some e-mails back and forth with Bratton's, and figured out that there are not supposed to be any washers under the nuts that hold the steering box to the frame. That fixes the interference problem!
Unfortunately, I might not have done a good enough job with the tuning of the steering box, as there's quite a lot of slop in the steering (maybe an eighth of a turn?). Not sure this is normal, I'm going to try and tighten it up a little, but I'm not sure I can get much better, as the thing was binding when I tried tightening things p any more (off the truck). See the video below for what I'm talking about.
Of course, to figure out there was that much slop in the steering box, I had to install the steering column and drag link. For now I'm leaving them on while I do other things, as it makes it a heck of a lot easier to push the chassis in and out of the garage!
Today was also a good day to install the shock absorbers! These are new ones I ordered a looong time ago. I finally got around to painting them over the last few days.
Today I went ahead and installed the left side shocks.
And also took down those shock arma and finally - I got everything loaded up to take the engine to a machine shop!
Last modified on 05/31/20