VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 1938 Steering Box

I have a 1938 Master Delux 2 door sedan. I will be removing the existing steering box and steering colum. What is the easiest way to remove both? What should I use to fill the steering box, (lubricant)?

Follow the instructions in the shop manual. There are 2 tricky steps.

One is that you need to pull the steering column up to the rear and off of the steering shaft. There is very little clearance between the upper end of the steering column and the headliner. I tape a rag on the column to protect the headliner.

The other tricky task is maneuvering the gear box and shaft assembly out of the engine compartment and over the left front fender. Put rags on the seat to protect it from the steering column. That end goes down as you lift the assembly up and over the side cowl and fender.

It really helps to have 2 people for the second task. One person can be inside the car controlling the end of the shaft.

Thank you Rusty for the information on taking the steering gear box and column off. What would be a good lubricant to put in the gear box? Thank you.

Self leveling grease. A lot folks, me included use John Deere Cornhead grease. If I remember right Rusty didn't have the best experience with cornhead grease so it may have been a bad batch. One of the users over on stovebolt.com did a slump test using different greases and it performed well there. Just don't use regular chassis or bearing grease. Those don't flow well. I'm sure others will have personal experience and advise to offer.

I use Castrol SHI 00 semi fluid grease:
https://www.napacanada.com/en/p/CAS0109670?impressionRank=20

It performs very well on the 4-Ball wear tests (D2266 and D2596) and has a Timken OK Load test of 60, and it flows.
In other words, it's exactly what you need.

PS
And it comes in affordable amounts. :-)

Tiny is correct that I was not as satisfied with the John Deere Corn head grease as others. I will say that it is probably more than adequate for the limited use of these classic vehicles. I doubt if you will ever wear out a steering gear.

It is an NGLI 0 grease which does flow a lot better than regular chassis or “gun” grease that is typically NGLI 2. The corn head grease will definitely not leak past the bushings in the steering box.

I filled the steering box in my ‘37 with corn head grease just before I got it back on the road. As expected the box was empty. After driving the car a couple of years I determined that there was enough wear in the gears that I needed to rebuild the box.

When I removed the cover from the box I was surprised how much of a cavity the sector gear had created in the grease. I was hoping that it would have flowed more. I did not think it was getting to the gear mesh area like I wanted.

I used an NGLI 00 grease after the rebuild. Whenever I removed the plug from the top of the box the grease would be level. It actually settled after the rebuild enough that I had to add more a coupe of times. I had just minor leakage past the sector shaft bushings.

Some of the Chat Members make their own steering gear grease. They mix gear oil and chassis grease to give them a semi-liquid lubricant.

I have read about a few instances where someone would machine the steering gear box so they could fit a regular rubber lip seal on the sector shaft. Then they could use regular GL-5 gear oil.