[gprocket]

Thanks Clayton!

I agree with your comments regarding wear on the main sector ("rocking shaft" in Alfa parlance). I've been lucky so far in that I haven't had to replace any bushings. In fact, I have seen very little wear on the internal components. The biggest issues I've seen are corrosion on the bearing surfaces from moisture (the result of no oil) and cracked cases.

My theory is that, here in the midwest anyway, these cars are rarely used as daily drivers, many live their lives under a car cover and rarely do we think about steering box maintenance. So the car sits there, oil drains out of the case, moisture follows and the mechanism gets real, real stiff. The stresses must be tremendous at that point. If that's not enough we add wide tires to the equation. Remember that these boxes were designed for 165mm wide tires. I'm running 205s and it is a chore to turn around in a tight spots. All that force is directed to that 1/4" thick aluminum case. Yikes!

We carefully warm the motor up making sure we we've got plenty of oil pressure and baby our precious Nords out of the garage. Then we make a sharp right turn at 1 mph and bang, there goes the Burman box! We blame the poor design when in reality if we gave one tenth the attention to the poor little Burman box that we give every other component on these cars they would last forever.

The irony in this is that it's cheaper and easier to find a good used motor than it is a good used steering box...