I broke down and replaced the PS gear box, pump and hoses yesterday. When I started it was 10 degrees in the garage and when I finished 6 hours later it was a whopping 27 degrees. The cold was the least of the whole deal! It all went smoothly until I got to the pitman arm. Puller on it, nothing! Heat, nothing! Big freakin' hammer and about 100 blows later it finally came off. I got it all together and was filling the pump when we spang a leak. The remanufactured pump was missing the brass fitting out of high pressure line port. I thought about pulling the gear box when I called a buddy and he suggested pulling the fitting out of the old gear box with the screw. Worked like charm. Finally no leak. Hopefully I'll never have to do this again. The good news is that the truck steers like new damn near.

 

I'm glad that it all worked out well for you, those pitman arms can be a bear to yank out.

If you dont mind telling, what is the reason that you replaced the steering box?

 

Oh man. I have a $50 "Mr. Heater" attachment that goes on a standard backyard barbecue propane tank. I'll turn it on about 15 minutes before I'm gonna do any work in the garage, then when I go out, it's at least warming up! I turn it on when the garage is only 50*!!!!!!!!!!!!! It'll warm up to 60* in about an hour.

How is your garage getting to 10*!! Man, get some insulation in there!

Gotta love the dedicaton, but at least you didn't have to do it in the driveway!

Thanks for the tip!

 

I totally agree with, Mitch. I'm up here in, Minnesota where it is way too cold to do any outside work on my truck from November through March.

About a month ago, I bought a 50,000/80,000/100,000 BTU propane heater. It cost $170.00 for the heater and another $20.00 for the 20-lb propane tank. Propane heaters are safe, efficient and cost effective. It's around $15.00 to fill the 20-lb tank and this will run for around 10 hours at 50,000 BTUs.

In the past month, this has saved me at least a few hundred dollars, when I had to track down a TCIL problem. I've also been able to wash my truck in my garage when the car washes are frozen. I was even able to fix my snow blower in the garage, rather than bringing it into the house where it would stink everything up with fuel. Last night, without anything better to do to pass the time, I removed and painted my differential cover.

The heater I have will heat our 400 sq-ft garage, with a 15 ft ceiling, to 70 degrees in about 20 minutes with an outside temperature of -0. I can now take on any project, when it arises, rather than paying someone else to.

It is a very worthwhile purchase

 

Insulation, what's that? I need to get that garage insulated, but since it is a detached garage it kind'a ends up low on the priority list. Besides that my wife thinks if it is cold in there I'll stay out of it, since everytime I'm in there it seems to cost us money. Someday though it will be heated, probably by a wood burner.
To answer LE PEW's question, my truck is a '92 with 84,000 miles on it and the steering was starting to get a lot of play in it. Once my wife had to drive it this past weekend while I took her car to Chicago for a motorcycle show, she said it needed to be fixed NOW! What a difference her driving it made. Before that it was always "you can live with it". I went with the Advace Auto Parts for all the parts since they were the only place around here that offered lifetime warranty on all the parts.

 

AjRagno, I have a cousin that owns a large traveling carnival that is based out of a small city just north of St. Paul(can't remeber the name of the city). We went up there for a family reunion a couple years back. Nice country you guys have up there, besides all the snow. I don't mind the cold, but hate the snow!

 

Newbie pulling posts up from the dead here:

So what was the root cause of the problem to cause the sloppy steering do you think? Do you feel that the PS gear box and pump had to be replaced to get the steering feel back?