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Replaced Steering Box, Steering Wheel Out of Alignment

6K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  flakrat 
#1 ·
Howdy,

I replaced the steering box on my 2001 7.3L (250K miles) with a Redhead. During the procedure I managed to let the steering wheel rotate about an 1/8th of a turn.

Of course I didn't notice until I got everything back together and took it for a test drive. Truck drives nice and straight, just with the wheel cocked to the right.

Question:

Can I simply detach the steering "rod?" from the box spline (with the wheels straight), rotate the steering wheel back to center, reattach to spline? Or do I need to do something more involved?
 
#2 ·
That's pretty much it - sounds like you are one tooth off. A lot of steering boxes have one spline thicker than the others so the pitman arm only goes on one way. If that's the case, you can center the wheel with the drag link adjustment.
 
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#3 ·
If I recall our trucks have the splines arranged so that the pitman arm can only go on one way. When I installed my Redhead my steering wheel got off center as well. A few minutes spent adjusting the drag link collar fixed it real easy. See You Tube below

 
#5 ·
Thanks all. That was the solution. Of course, I didn't start with the drag link and removed all of the stuff in the way to get to the linkage between the steering box and wheel...

Only to discover, which I should have noticed before installing, that the spline that the steering wheel ultimately attaches to, is also keyed. It has a flat spot (that happened to be on the bottom) and the coupler from the steering wheel can only mount one way. Doh!

Drag link for the win.
 
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