Yeah an adjustment won't fix that.

Disassembly and reassembly is kind of complicated. What I'd do is go to the wreckers and buy a good box.

If you want to tackle reassembly, the factory service manual has several pages on it.

Meant to write "that" instead of theatre lol when I opened the steering box only two of the teeth on the gear were in contact with the worm. Been trying to adjust it for three days now lol can't seem to get it to where it needs to be ahaha :/

Quote:
Theatre?

Not sure what could cause those symptoms

Tried theatre lol the guy who had my Ute before me messed with the worm placement so it would steer to the left all the way but only a quarter of the way to the right

To adjust worm & roller steering gear, loosen the locknut, then finger-tight the screw.




1. Turn wheels straight ahead. It is important to adjust the lash when the gearbox is centered. Otherwise it will be too tight in one direction
2. Loosen locknut (14mm), turn counter-clockwise as usual
3. Tighten adjusting screw with a flat-bladed screwdriver, just finger tight. Do not apply any real torque
4. Tighten locknut, while holding screwdriver from turning. You don't want the lock nut to turn the adjuster

If you tighten it too much, the steering will get heavy at the center point and will accelerate wear of the box

Anyone know how to adjust the steering worm onto the gear that's inside the steering box?

Quote:The way to check on that is to look for movement of the steering gear arm as you wiggle the wheel back and forth. The arm is visible under the car. Use two fingers to move the wheel back and forth. If the gear arm DOESN'T move but the steering wheel does, then the looseness is in the column/gear or steering wheel connection. This is very rarely seen even in my country where all the boxes are the collapsible type. More typically the gear will move in sync with the wheel, but some other part won't move (usually a tie-rod end is where the play is).

When the bushings on my idler arm went bad, it made a "tap-tap" sound whenever going over the slightest ripple in the pavement. It also made the steering only slightly loose (like 2" play in the steering wheel). Two new bushings were only $7. The idler was visibly bad when doing the visual test as listed above.

check the idler arm bush. some guy had that problem and made a video on youtube. jack the car up and move the front wheels with your hands. should pin point if its the box or linkages

Okay so I got about 5 minutes to look at the car today and didn't get far at all in terms of checking anything as the car lives outside and it was raining, but noticed I have the rippled column which means it's the collapsible type, which is strange as its a late 72 model which means wouldn't be factory, but does this suggest any other reason for the slipping in terms of maybe being partially collapsed or something? The column itself seems to have no in or out movement and seems quite stiff with no real play from wheel to box that I can tell... Thanks in advance.