I asked one of my friends, who raced dirt track for around twenty years, about tightening the allen nut on the steering box to try to remove my 2” of play after I read about the idea on these boards. His immediate response was that tightening the nut was a slightly ******* thing to do and that I shouldn’t touch it. He said that the nut was a set screw (or something along those lines, this convo happened a while ago) that was meant to be set at the factory and never touched again. He said that if I had play in the system to replace the box.

I’m not looking to have the box functioning as new again; I just want to have a more drivable car. Is tightening the nut really that bad of an idea?

 

yes tightening the nut is the worst thing you can do. as wear develops on the gears inside that box, the endplay is increased, although usually the wear is exaggerated on the part of the gears that would have the wheels face forward and not on the extremes when you turn. If you turn the nut in to remove that endplay the box can and will bind when making a turn, causing you not to be able to straighten the wheel back out. there have been several posts of this nature on the ck5.com forums describing this situation. one guy luckily ran into a cornfield instead of someone's house.

 

I was afraid of that. I guess the quick fix will have to wait for a better solution. I really don’t want to have it rebuilt so that it will develop the play again in another 10 years. Time to poke around some.

If anyone has any input into a better box, post it here: https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=326687

Thanks