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Steering Box Brace

Interesting. Please keep us updated!
 
nosigma said:
I installed it tonight. I would change a couple things if I did it again:

#1 Use the two bolt bearing like NCCherokee did. After welding it up the plate distorted and I got contact between the rear two bolts and the Pitman arm. This would never happen with the two bolt bearing.

#2 Use a spherical bearing. The alignment is super critical to make sure the steering shaft is not bound up. I had to pull mine 3 times and beat it with a sledge hammer (its damn strong) to "tweak it" a few hundredths of an inch so everything lined up perfectly. A spherical bearing in a two bolt housing would give just as good lateral support while allowing for slight changes in alignment between the shaft and the bearing.

Following up on #2 above: I am concerned what will happen as the chassis flexes when it up on two diagonal wheels or leaned over way far off camber and the chassis flexes. Will it bind? Probably. Will it make it hard to steer? I doubt it. Will I wear out the steering box faster? Probably. Time will tell.

John
Click to expand...

Yeah when I bought that bearing they told me it would self align, which is nice considering possible chassis flex. However, on mine I have my rigid front bumper, this steering brace, and the RE trackbar brace, so I think my front end is pretty stiff, I'm not sure I'm going to have much chassis flex affecting it

I like how you picked up a few more bolt including the steering box. My bumper plates hit those, and would have been more difficult for me to catch.

Are you able to retain the swaybar? I wasn't an haven't fabbed anything up yet. Wondering if I could slide an anti rock type bar in the brace if I cut open the ends.
 
Live and learn on the self aligning bearing. Maybe the next person will benefit from this.

I have been running a heavily trimmed stock bumper which bolts together from 5 pieces (bumper, short brackets and log brackets that pick up the stock tow hooks). I have not put it back in yet but I figure I will have to oval out some holes and add some extra plating to the frame aft of the cross member vertical brackets that grap the steering box bolts so the tow hook plates bolt up cleanly. I will have build a custom bumper to fit around all this bracing and plating.

I may beat you to the sway bar fix. My inspection expires next month and I need the sway bar to pass. I will try to space it down and/or shift if fwd or aft to get it all to line up.

BTW my DW is finally gone after 21 months of fighting it. Was it the extra frame plating I just did (inside & bottom, outside was already done in 3/16ths), was it the extra stiffness added by the cross member, was it the extra steering box support or was it some combination of the three? I will never know but its fixed. I cant thank you enough for posting up how you built your cross member and bearing suport. I am sure it had a lot to do with saving my rig from the junkyard.

John

Here are a couple pics of the finished product after a tremendously successful test drive.



 
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That's the point of the forum i suppose. i just wasnt happy with what was out there and i like the dodge style brace. glad it could help someone. Wish someone would start selling these, with quality fit/finish, and maybe a way to retain stock swaybar. Mine barely gets driven on the street anymore, but I hardly used the swaybar before anyways, and I still don't miss it. I bet if I drove mine offroad then drove one with a currie or pro-crack swaybar I might change my tune. Ignorance is bliss
 
I wonder if your sector shaft bearing was worn out on the box? Didn't read through the whole thread so not sure if you tried another box or not, but I could see that causing death wobble.
 
Do you have a part # / source for the bearing and the sector shaf nut? I have tried to contact the people who make the Dodge brace, but no one has ever returned any corespondance.
 
Which company did you call? There are probably 6 companies or more who make them for the Rams.
 
I got my nut from PSC. Bought the bearing separately because PSC wanted too much for it. I heard PSC stopped selling them but I don't know that for sure. Wouldn't be too hard to have a machine shop make one. If there are other companies that make the dodge brace I'm sure their bearing nut will work too. Same threads and diameter on these Saginaw boxes.
 
NCCherokee said:
I got my nut from PSC. Bought the bearing separately because PSC wanted too much for it. I heard PSC stopped selling them but I don't know that for sure. Wouldn't be too hard to have a machine shop make one. If there are other companies that make the dodge brace I'm sure their bearing nut will work too. Same threads and diameter on these Saginaw boxes.
Click to expand...

MoparManiac:
I had just replace the steering box about 6 months ago (See my DW thread). I have had problems with steering boxes wearing out in the past so this was insurance on the steering box. I really wanted the brace to tie the frame rails together. Between the brace, the bearing, plating the inside of the frame rails and what was not already plated on the lower (outer was already plated) the DW went away. My rig has been wheeled really hard for almost 10 years so the chassis was in bad shape despite plating the outside about 3 years ago.

I literally purchased the LAST NUT from PSC. They had no plans to make more, I asked. If you read back in the thread there was another company that NCCherokee purchased a nut from who might still make them. The nut was not very long but I am sure you could find a bearing that would work with it. I would post the bearing info but you wouldnt want to use the 4 bolt non self aligning bearing I used because of the interference with the pitman arm (lots of grinding on the mounting plate and bearing flange) and the high precision with which you need to fab up the bracket that holds it so it shares a center line with the sector shaft.

1) Use a self aligning bearing
2) Use a two bolt diamond shaped bearing flange like NCCherokee did.

For what its worth my stock bumper wont go back on now that I have 10 gauge on top of 3/16th plate on the frame rails and the brackets that hold the factory tow hooks interfere with the 2x2 cross member. I thought for a couple hours that the ORS fab bumper would fit but it too interferes with the 2x2 cross member. With a little work you could probably buy the ORSFAB bumper (it puts the winch under the radiator, fits real tight) and then add a bracket to it for holding the bearing. Looks like I get to build a bumper now. I never had winch before (all the cool kids have them so there is always one around) and I have never needed one on my rig (I will live to regret saying that).

John
 
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Got my bearing from bearingson.com. The other nut I tried was from a JK kit. It fit, but was designed so that the bearing surface was around the sector shaft, not below it. Seemed cool at first Cus it wouldn't hang down as far. However because the diameter of the bearing surface is larger to fit around the sector shaft, you needed a much larger bearing, that negated the clearance gains. In the end the two were probably equivalent, but I went with the smaller PSC nut and bearing because it worked with my brace design better.
 
nosigma said:
MoparManiac:
I had just replace the steering box about 6 months ago (See my DW thread). I have had problems with steering boxes wearing out in the past so this was insurance on the steering box. I really wanted the brace to tie the frame rails together. Between the brace, the bearing, plating the inside of the frame rails and what was not already plated on the lower (outer was already plated) the DW went away. My rig has been wheeled really hard for almost 10 years so the chassis was in bad shape despite plating the outside about 3 years ago.

I literally purchased the LAST NUT from PSC. They had no plans to make more, I asked. If you read back in the thread there was another company that NCCherokee purchased a nut from who might still make them. The nut was not very long but I am sure you could find a bearing that would work with it. I would post the bearing info but you wouldnt want to use the 4 bolt non self aligning bearing I used because of the interference with the pitman arm (lots of grinding on the mounting plate and bearing flange) and the high precision with which you need to fab up the bracket that holds it so it shares a center line with the sector shaft.

1) Use a self aligning bearing
2) Use a two bolt diamond shaped bearing flange like NCCherokee did.

For what its worth my stock bumper wont go back on now that I have 10 gauge on top of 3/16th plate on the frame rails and the brackets that hold the factory tow hooks interfere with the 2x2 cross member. I thought for a couple hours that the ORS fab bumper would fit but it too interferes with the 2x2 cross member. With a little work you could probably buy the ORSFAB bumper (it puts the winch under the radiator, fits real tight) and then add a bracket to it for holding the bearing. Looks like I get to build a bumper now. I never had winch before (all the cool kids have them so there is always one around) and I have never needed one on my rig (I will live to regret saying that).

John
Click to expand...


Thanks for the heads up, but I already run a home made winch bumper. Cutting and pasting a bit doesn't pose a problem.

Also glad to know that there are multiple manufacturers and that the pickup part will fit.

Thanks
 
Hate to revive this, but I'm in the same boat (blowing up sector shaft bearings and seals, and also hunting down my last "clunk" in the front end which may just be the sector shaft play).

Did anyone ever find a solution to retain the stock (ish) sway bar? Yes, I'd love to go to an anti-rock but the Currie won't fit with the sector shaft brace's pictured in this thread anyway, and I just haven't found a machinist with reasonable rates so I can get my own torsion bar cut up to fit around the brace.

I've got both types of pillow block sitting on my back seat waiting for inspiration on the brace design, to retain the sway bar.
 
Yea, I'd looked at their design, but as I'm running cross-over 1-tonne steering, my sway bar mounts (axle side) are already 8" higher than stock. If I drop the sway bar mounting location (frame side), the arm angle will be way too high (it's already too high, and I already cut my links down to about 6" long). Cutting down the links any shorter and the angle would be too steep to get them connected.

I may just say screw it and drop it down temporarily, but only if I've got a plan for a near future anti-roll bar (which I don't, as machinists all want >$500 to machine some splines into a torsion bar for me).
 
The one option I'd thought of, was to box in the outer side of the steering box itself, using the top plate bolts to secure a plate running down to the shaft, then another plate under the shaft, with the pillow block bolted in. Then just brace the plating over to the passenger rail. Seems like it should work in terms of being able to clear the sway bar, but does it make sense to only brace to the passenger rail?
 
Any loading will simply want to twist and pull at the steering box if you only mount to the pass frame rail. With a sector shaft brace, it is very important to capture both frame rails. You want to remove the stress being transferred to the box, not add additional forces. You also have to keep in mind that the frame rails do twist and move independent of each other even if well supported/plated...ect.
 
Boostwerks.com said:
Any loading will simply want to twist and pull at the steering box if you only mount to the pass frame rail. With a sector shaft brace, it is very important to capture both frame rails. You want to remove the stress being transferred to the box, not add additional forces. You also have to keep in mind that the frame rails do twist and move independent of each other even if well supported/plated...ect.
Click to expand...

Yup. Good call sir. I'd been wondering about that, but hadn't seen any discussion on it. Realistically, I really can't imagine there being much flex left in my uni, especially at the front end. My bumper adds a tonne of torsional stiffness as is, but then I'm also plated and braced on both sides, and my steering is pretty flat (compared to other jeeps my height). But, after remembering that my sway bar arms are a few inches longer than stock, and my axle mounts are pushed forward a bit as well, moving the sway bar back a few inches should be no problem, in which case I can tie the sector shaft brace into both frame rails, which seems like the safest (and simplest to build) answer anyway.
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