[dbest]

Gentlemen, I have excessive vertical play in the ZF steering box in my SS. I have removed the top cover to investigate. In order to do so I had to completely remove the adjusting screw locknut as the adjusting screw will not pull out of the shaft, it does, however, rotate freely. Also the screw never seems to adjust anything. I would have thought it would have threaded into the top cover so that when it was rotated it would move vertically relative to the rocker shaft.


Questions: Does the adjusting screw thread into the top cover? Should it easily pull out of the rocker shaft? Should I now have a beer and wait for responses?

Regards, Don

 

[dbest]

Gordon, thanks for the help. I thought I would pass on what I have learned so far to satisfy the curious.

First Phillips makes a very good IPA. Perfect for pondering steering boxes in the "summer" heat on the west coast.

Second, it pays to have a long if not good memory... I found an old ZF steering box amongst the brambles in a local import wrecking yard. The long memory part means it only took 20 minutes of searching, having been there before.

Third, the manuals have been translated from italian, duh... so when it states to slacken the lock-nut on the adjusting screw it really means remove it, or the top cover will never come off. (as an aside the Alfa manuals for the 60s cars are no way as close to entertaining as Datsun manuals of the same era)

Fourth, perhaps not never as I discovered my old cover had the adjusting screw threads completely stripped out. In fact the hole measures 14 mm, while the adjusting screw is 12 mm.

Fifth, the adjusting screw is held captive to the rocker arm by a circlip in my bramble-bush box while the original is still a bit of a mystery. It appears to be held in place by a "wavey" clip with no split. I am hesitant to remove it for fear of damage.

So where am I now? I replaced the top cover, adjusted the screw as per the manual, first at centre and then at 30 degrees off centre, but found the box so tight that the steering will not return to centre without assistance when exiting a corner. I doubled up on the top gasket but no change, the screw is at its loose limit and the steering is way to tight. Unless someone has a brilliant idea I think I will be ordering some bushing and doing a complete rebuild.

Don

 

[dbest]

I wonder if Don ever sorted out his SS box.

Ken

Hi Ken, yes I did.... you must have too much time on your hands or not enough to think about... are all your projects done?

As I recall a complete rebuild was required. I "think" I sourced a NOS top cover from AFRA and had a machinist deal with the bushings. The hard part was testing the torque specified to turn the assembled box . I recall a rube goldberg setup with a mashed up lever and a volume of water calculated to be the calibrated weight.

I still have the SS...next project is to install my newly rebuilt DCOE2 carbs to free up the DCOE32 units. I was not smart enough to exchange the carbs when I had the motor out for a rebuild.

Don