I took off my steering box assembly cover to clean it during my engine compartment clean-up and the o-ring crumbled into pieces as I removed it (see photo). Does anyone know where you can buy just this o-ring? Also, is there another o-ring that would be about the size of a quarter that would go inside the inner shaft of the cover where the center bolt hole is located, where the pitman shaft goes up into it? Also, where can you buy the assembly cover seal, which to me looks like a gasket in the shop manual?

 

You should check out O'reillys and Autozone. They sell the PS gearbox rebuild kits for around 40.00

 

So I stopped by a shop that rebuilds steering gears to see if I could just get the o-ring and seal and not have to get the whole kit. He said that since when I took off the cover the o-ring was split into a number of pieces that I needed to get the steering box, and the power steering pump rebuilt? The power steering worked fine before I took off the cover, just to clean it, so shouldn't I just need to put in a new o-ring, and seal, and put the cover back on, and have the lash adjusted? Or can you not adjust the last when the steering box is in the car? Am I missing something here?

 

I think what the shop was trying to say is that there's a possibility you may have disintegrated rubber parts running through your system. What they needed to hear was that it fell apart when you took it out, not before. Also, they would be happy to take some $$$$ from you to rebuild both units. They are looking at this as a closed system with total catastrophic failure in mind.

Just based on what you've posted I would just go and buy the rebuild kit - it's not expensive. Follow the guidelines in the CSM to do what you need. I'm a big believer in if it's not broke, it don't need fixing. When I took out my gearbox and pump, I looked into rebuilding both. Neither was really in need of it though. What ended up happening was a total flush without the rebuild. The parts all cleaned up nice, painted and reinstalled great. Burping(bleeding) the air from the system was the worst of my problems.

Get the O ring kit and go from there. If you've got the gearbox apart already, you should replace all the parts you need to as part of the resto. It will be good for another 42 years.

 

Thanks Allan R.