center turning resistance on steering box

I bought a YJ steering box from a part-out. I wanted to make sure it works before I switched mine out, so I put vice grips on the input shaft and gave it a pull. It's very hard to turn in the center of the swing, but swings smoothly and easily once you get past the center. Is this correct and normal? One of the rebuild threads I was reading through seemed to have the same thing but I didn't see it again, and I haven't done a lot of work with these, and the high-mileage unit on my XJ has a bunch of play so it's not a good comparison.

Thanks

bump

I t depends a little on how high the turning resistance is, but it certainly should have tangibly higher resistance on center. If it turns very smoothly off center, it's probably all right. It should never be tight enough to bind off center.

It may not be really easy to quantify this if the box is dry, filled with fluid, or has been sitting a while, but the factory specs for the XJ box are that freshly lubed but empty of fluid, on the bench, the on center drag should be 4 to 8 inch pounds greater than the input shaft drag (which is more or less what you feel off center). That's not really tight, but though it's a small number it's definitely easy to feel, and enough that you couldn't comfortably turn the shaft over center with your fingers.

Thanks, wanted to get some idea before I went to the trouble of swapping it, pulling Pitman arms, etc

Follow up here: I got it installed, and the steering box was practically seized with lots of drag everywhere and especially in the center. I kept the drag link disconnected and ran 2 quarts of ATF and 3 quarts of power steering fluid through the box until it finally started running smoothly. Then I found that the preload screw on top of the box (which is frequently mischaracterized as a slop screw) was almost maxed out with the preload very high. I knocked it back down and the box seems fine now, not as easy as my old XJ box but easy enough.

ehall said:

Follow up here: I got it installed, and the steering box was practically seized with lots of drag everywhere and especially in the center. I kept the drag link disconnected and ran 2 quarts of ATF and 3 quarts of power steering fluid through the box until it finally started running smoothly. Then I found that the preload screw on top of the box (which is frequently mischaracterized as a slop screw) was almost maxed out with the preload very high. I knocked it back down and the box seems fine now, not as easy as my old XJ box but easy enough.

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It sounds as if someone got at it before you. Good thing you caught it before you crashed. There was a change in boost some time during the run, and later XJ's have a good deal heavier steering than early ones.