Anyone ever removed the pitman arm on a 1st gen Toronado? I'm looking at removing the steering box on mine just to tighten up the endplay adjustments (steering is slightly loose) and step 4 in the CSM tells you that you have to remove the pitman arm with a puller. I'm looking at it and there's no way you're getting a puller in there with the pitman shaft nut being so close to the front crossmember. If it's possible, boy I'd love to see it done! Seeing as though the nut on the shaft is torqued to 200 ft lbs, it's gonna be pretty rough taking that nut off with an open ended wrench. I'm gonna look at doing this adjustment on the car, but it's not the best idea from what I can tell.

I can easily get on the relay rod-pitman arm connection easily and pull that off, however that will leave the pitman arm still attached to the steering gear. Can I just remove the steering box with the pitman arm still attached? This is a weird one.......the CSM is very unhelpful here honestly. A little more detail would have been helpful. See my pics below (that greasy mess of a picture isn't my car.....just one I have in my photo collection that is the same model).

And before anyone asks about the slop in my steering, I've replaced all the components in the steering system with NOS stuff.

 

The nut is torqued to 220 ft lbs. There is no open end wrench in the world that will get that off. There is a Kent Moore tool to remove and re-torque that nut. I have no idea how to use a puller on it. Just pull the box and do this on the bench.

 

Ditto on the removal of the unit to service. Do not try a short cut, on the bench is proper method, ask me how I know.

 

Thanks guys, yeah, that's what I was leaning towards anyway. The CSM is very misleading here. In the "steering gear removal" section, they tell you to pull the pitman arm prior to steering gear removal, which appears to be impossible.

In my case, I don't even need to mess with the pitman arm other than to pop it free from the relay rod. I'm assuming it will come out of the car with the arm still attached?

 

Its been 40 years and my memory is foggy on this, but somehow I was able to remove the pitman arm on my '69 Toro using a puller w/o removing the box from the frame. Isn't the '69s considered 1st-gen?

 

Yes sir! Definitely a 1st gen.

I really don't know how you can get the nut off, nevermind getting a puller in there. The nut is torqued to well over 200 ft lbs and the only thing that fits in there is an open end wrench. You might be able to get the box end in there, maybe.

 

We may have used a big plumber's "monkey" wrench to get the nut off, but I sure don't remember not being able to fit the puller in there, for sure we didn't break any hydraulics to do it (never considered full removal to do it on a bench). We probably pickle-forked the joint from the center link first, because we subsequentially tried to pickle-fork the pitman arm off the box (dumb idea), which led me to purchase the puller that I still have. It may be possible that we disconnected the steering shaft and 2 box bolts to swing it to gain puller access. It was a PITA for sure.

 

Hmm, maybe. I dunno, it looks crazy tight to me. It almost looks to me that the pitman arm itself is too thick to fit under the shaft to remove it. Seems to me you'd just be better off pulling the steering gear with it still attached. One thing I know is that you ain't hitting that 220 ft-lb spec after it's installed in the car.

 

Back then, I had no idea what the torque spec was, nor what a CSM was. This was pure SOTP. I figured that the best I could do is to tighten the nut as much as possible since there was no chance of stripping those huge threads with a monkey wrench. My 1st ex ended up taking the Toro and later sold it to one of my friends after she let the trans run low on fluid and cooked some clutches (she lost $$ on that deal, lol). He fixed that and drove it a few years before the CV joints parked it in his parent's driveway. It wasn't long before his younger brother pulled the 455 and sold it out from under him. He scrapped the rest not long after, but that pitman arm never gave him problems. True story.

 

LOL, that's a great story. Too bad you couldn't of hung on to that car, I think they're so cool.

What puller did you end up using? You mentioned that you still have it........I can imagine maybe a ball joint separator would work ok.

 

Mine looks just like this one. IMO, its the only tool stout enough to separate that splined joint. It pays for itself on the first job, although you can probably rent one. Best of luck, I do not envy you on this job.

 

Well, the pitman arm on my car is actually new. I didn't replace it myself, my Dad had it replaced a couple years ago so I won't be pulling it if I don't need to. I'm just trying to adjust the steering gear to take up some of the slack I believe is present in the system. I'm just pulling the steering box itself, as I was confused by the CSM instructions which certainly appear to be incorrect. Hopefully it's not too big of a PITA.

Thanks!

 

The assembly manual shows a note saying that you must install the pitman arm to the steering gear before installing the gear to the frame. I would assume this is because you can't get the proper torque on the shaft nut when it's installed. That makes sense.

So, hopefully the whole assembly comes out of the car together and isn't too much of a hassle.

 

Just another vote for pulling the box. Remember that the CSM was written for professionals at dealers who could get special tools from Kent-Moore and others. We’re decades away from that kind of help.

In case you need encouragement, the torque values on box-to-frame bolts are quite reasonable and it’s not too bad popping the center link off the pitman arm.

While you’re in there you might replace the rubber donut that connects the column to the steering box. I found that new donuts gave my columns a slightly better feel of precision.

Chris

 

Thanks Chris,

Yeah, I have a gameplan in place. Gonna loosen the steering box so that it's free to flop around a bit, then pop the pitman arm from the relay rod. Just so there's some give there when the puller is on the pitman arm relay rod bolt. Once I pull the steering couple, the whole thing should be free to come out (after disconnecting the lines of course).

 

Alright, so if anyone is looking to do this on your 1st gen Toronado.....just pull the steering gear. It came out pretty easy! I removed the coupler bolt and slid the fitting backwards. Then I loosened the steering gear holdown bolts and popped the pitman arm from the relay rod. Then, I pulled the hydraulic lines from the power steering (have ear plugs handy to plug the lines because it gets messy fast). On my car, I have the A.I.R. pump and lines in the way so I removed the filter housing and moved the hoses out of the way. I also had to loosen the power steering pump so I could get the belt out of the way and pulled the steering gear out with the pitman arm still attached. It came out of the area by the vacuum tank. It's heavy!

Anyway, that's it. The hardest part, I felt, was getting the steering coupler off of the gearbox shaft. It fought me just a little but it wasn't bad. If you didn't have the A.I.R. system on the car, it would be even easier as those exhaust lines are right in the way when your trying to pull the pump.

If you needed to replace the pitman arm, it would be pretty easy to do with it sitting on the bench. Now, getting everything back in.......that could be tricky. I could see the steering coupler being put back on crooked pretty easy. Will have to be careful because everything really moves around easily. She might need an alignment after this, we'll see. Two thumbs down on the CSM with this job, it was almost no help at all. I wonder if they updated the manual in later years? Perhaps there's a Service Guild section, I should have checked as I have the '66 and '67 years of those (doh!).

 

Install process is kinda difficult. A second person to help would definitely help that's for sure.

The first thing you have to know is that in order to get the steering shaft coupling to slide on to the steering gear input, you can't have any of the gear box bolts in place. You have to manipulate the gear box onto the shaft with one hand on the box, one hand on the steering shaft so it has to be completely free. It's pretty tricky and, like I mentioned, a second person sure would help this go a little smoother because the box is not light.

The next frustrating thing is that, according to the CSM, there is supposed to be an alignment pin that fits into a hole in the frame to help you line up the steering box mounting bolts. Well, I don't know about your car but on mine there is no pin and no hole for a pin in the frame. This made aligning the bolts a serious pain in the butt when you're working by yourself. I used a couple of long extensions to hold it in place and gently pry'd on the pitman arm to help with the alignment (go easy!) and get a couple bolts started. Make sure you don't have the pitman arm nut tight, keep it loose for now. You can tighten everything at the end.

The steering wheel appears to be a touch crooked now too so I think there's no avoiding an alignment after taking up the slack in the gear. Hope this helps!

 

Took the car out for a good run yesterday and the slop in the steering is completely gone. Also, as a bonus, my steering wheel is actually straight after all this. I thought it was going to be slightly crooked when I had the car jacked and I was bleeding the air from the power steering but it actually wound up being bang on.

I had a geyser of power steering fluid when attempting to bleed the lines. Don't follow the manual if you do this job.

I had much better luck running the steering lock to lock about 30 times with the front jacked and the engine not running prior to actually running the engine and continuing with the bleeding process.

 

Glad to hear you were able to complete this job and get your Toro back on the road.