Steering Box Upgrade - Car Craft Magazine

Steering Box Upgrade Steering Box Repair

Find a useful steering box candidate out of the local yard, clean it up, and bolt it on your Chevelle, Camaro, or Nova to get rid of that vague '60s steering.

Find a useful steering box candidate out of the local yard, clean it up, and bolt it on yo

Drive a new Mustang, Challenger, or Corvette and then slide behind the wheel of a '60s muscle car and it takes about a minute to realize that ride quality, handling, and performance feel have evolved quite nicely in the last 40 years. The first thing you notice is how that new car steering wheel has a direct connection to the road, while that '60s muscle car feels like a soggy bowl of porridge. In fact, we've driven some of the more upscale computer simulations that have better feedback through the steering wheel than a stock '64 Chevelle. The good news is there's an easy fix for this vagueness if you own a '64 to '72 Chevelle, '67 to '81 Camaro, or '68 to '74 Nova. And the parts are no farther away than the local boneyard.

Back in the '60s, GM thought the one-finger approach to twirling the steering wheel in a parallel parking exercise was the blue-ribbon pass for the ultimate driving experience. While that might have been great for your grandmother in 1965, any track day junkie will tell you it's the effort and feedback through the steering wheel from the front tires that is part and parcel of the handling holy grail. Beginning in the late '70s and through the '90s, GM's classic recirculating ball steering box has drastically improved steering feel and, as you might guess, there are almost as many different versions of this box as Pamela Anderson has plastic surgeons in her Rolodex.

Several years ago, certain steering boxes had surfaced as ideal junkyard swaps for these early Chevys. To be accurate, this swap will also work for any early A-Body, such as a Pontiac, a Buick, or an Oldsmobile and also first- and second-generation Camaros and Firebirds. All the demand for these good boxes, such as the '85 to '88 Monte Carlo SS box, has put a crimp in the supply. We drilled a little deeper into the GM steering box grab bag and discovered several other body styles that are excellent candidates for this swap. We also spent a day with Tom Lee at Lee Manufacturing, the guru of steering box science who builds steering boxes for Sprint Cars, Cup cars, and many of the hard-charging off-road racers who are masters of steering box abuse. The beauty of all this is that the knowledge transfer that trickles down from race cars will make your street car box a real treat.

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The following condensed chart was derived from a much longer original created by Jim Shea, which appears on the Team Chevelle web-site formatted by Wes Vann and used with permission. If you would like to see the entire spreadsheet, it can be found at chevelles.com/techref/ftecref29.html. Shea has also posted updated references on the corvettefaq.com website. Just look for the Jim Shea's Steering Papers notation in the upper righthand corner of the page. Jim also goes into great detail on modifying the steering column to mount the new flexible coupling, which we don't have room to detail here.

In the above chart, the code can be found stamped on the bottom cover of the steering box. The arrow points to the faint YA code. You will most likely have to carefully clean dirt and oil off of a used box to find this code. This is the easiest way to identify a given Saginaw box.
In the above chart, the code can be found stamped on the bottom cover of the steering box.
According to Tom Lee, the top fitting closest to the steering wheel is always the return line fitting, while the high-pressure fitting is the one nearest to the aluminum top cover. The fitting sizes in the box are intentionally different to prevent switching the connections. Since an accidental mix-up could easily happen with AN line fittings, it's a good idea to color key the fittings to prevent a seal failure in the box.
According to Tom Lee, the top fitting closest to the steering wheel is always the return l
One thing that did change in the '80s is the size of the steering box input shaft, which means you'll need a new steering coupler like this GM unit to adapt the new steering box to the original steering column.
One thing that did change in the '80s is the size of the steering box input shaft, which m