Hi all,
I'm getting up the nerve to tear down the steering gear on my 59 to check its condition and see if I need to rebuild. A while back, figuring I would need to replace the work gear no mater what, I preemptively bought a rebuild kit including the worm gear. I have since read "As the Worm Turns" PDF brought to us from the Corvette Forum by Dave Zuberer. This PDF documents the saga numerous folks from that forum and NCRS went through trying to figure out what was wrong with one poor man's (JPW) steering. In the end if was found that the readily available repro worms made in Argentina are not made to spec and invariably vary in center measurement which affects the steering adjustments needed.
Within that PDF it shows how to measure the center of an original worm, by measuring the half-way point with calipers opposite of the cutout key. However it isn't clear to me how to measure the repro worm to check for irregularity since the machining looks different. The original appears to have a bit of a sharp "edge" and the repros a bit of a "flat" area. In my pic would I measure from the top arrow, the bottom arrow, or in between the arrows? Dependign how I measure, the worm's center appears more or less better.
Also, I wanted to verify if I identified the key properly as the repro is a bit different there from an original as well. Pics below.
Original worm measuring
pa180063_7e3f85d6551d536d5f27429db9fa06b1e5dec454.jpg
Original worm "key"
pa180057_dc0f4b4d6a0d7977d19e3e751c9632213078f169.jpg
repro worm "key" ?
IMG_3710.jpg
Repro worm
IMG_3713.jpg
I'm getting up the nerve to tear down the steering gear on my 59 to check its condition and see if I need to rebuild. A while back, figuring I would need to replace the work gear no mater what, I preemptively bought a rebuild kit including the worm gear. I have since read "As the Worm Turns" PDF brought to us from the Corvette Forum by Dave Zuberer. This PDF documents the saga numerous folks from that forum and NCRS went through trying to figure out what was wrong with one poor man's (JPW) steering. In the end if was found that the readily available repro worms made in Argentina are not made to spec and invariably vary in center measurement which affects the steering adjustments needed.
Within that PDF it shows how to measure the center of an original worm, by measuring the half-way point with calipers opposite of the cutout key. However it isn't clear to me how to measure the repro worm to check for irregularity since the machining looks different. The original appears to have a bit of a sharp "edge" and the repros a bit of a "flat" area. In my pic would I measure from the top arrow, the bottom arrow, or in between the arrows? Dependign how I measure, the worm's center appears more or less better.
Also, I wanted to verify if I identified the key properly as the repro is a bit different there from an original as well. Pics below.
Original worm measuring
pa180063_7e3f85d6551d536d5f27429db9fa06b1e5dec454.jpg
Original worm "key"
pa180057_dc0f4b4d6a0d7977d19e3e751c9632213078f169.jpg
repro worm "key" ?
IMG_3710.jpg
Repro worm
IMG_3713.jpg
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