Here is another section of the overhaul, the steering box, king pin bearings.
The steering box is a real pain to get out, you need to remove the steering drag link between the two front wheels and also the winch propshaft so you can get the exhaust down pipe off, once this is all done the steering wheel has to be removed, mine came off with a clout from a club hammer and a piece of wood, after undoing the centre nut ( watch out for the key way falling out ) then the cross shaft drop arm, this is splined and tapered, undo nut a bit then using a hub puller force the drop arm off, I needed to apply some heat for this. Then there are the four bolts holding the box to the chassis rail, these have nuts and lock nuts on the outside of the chassis rail, so you need to hold the bolt and undo the nuts. Then with a wiggle and a bit of force get the box out..
This pic is after it has been cleaned up ready for stripping down, stay tuned.
Moving on from this, to the replacement of the steering king pin bearings of which there are four, one each side at the top and one each side at the bottom of the swivel housings on the front axle, a handy note here is these bearings are the same for the Banjo and split axles,
Bearing numbers are: outer 41286, inner 41125.
Strip down hubs by splitting the two halves and remove top and bottom bearing caps, watch out for shims under these as you will need them again. After I inspected mine it seems that the bottom bearings need replacing as these get all the pounding and carry all the front end weight of the truck, the top bearing just keeps it all upright.
This is a complete bearing.
Here you can see the wear marks generally in the straight ahead position as this is where the bearing sits most of the time so getting most of the shock.
More to come as I work through it all.