Crossover Steering-Tying up the loose ends.
Boxing The Frame:
I have wheeled the Ramcharger for a year or so with the crossover steering, but with out boxing the frame. I felt that with the steering assist ram, there would be reduced stress on the frame. Even so, there are way to many frame failures with hard wheeling and crossover to risk it for too long. When I had the front of the engine removed to replace the timing chain, it was the ideal time to box the frame.
I started by first removing the box from the frame. As you can see, on the '72-'77 4wd truck frames, the 4th mounting hole is enlarged for access to the sector shaft adjustment screw. When mounted in the 2wd position on the frame, the steering box mounts using four 7/16" bolts, 3 of the holes in the frame are 1/2", the 4th is 1". This access hole is used as one of the 4 mounting holes. Originally I had simply used a large washer under the bolt head.
Since I needed to sleeve the frame to box it, I bought 1" DOM tubing with a 1/4" wall. This way I would just drill out the 3 other mounting holes to 1".
I cut 4 pieces of the DOM tubing about 1/16" longer than the unthreaded portion of the new 4" long grade 8 bolts. Then I mounted them to the steering box with washers on the bolts. By mounting the sleeves to the steering box before welding, I was guaranteed that they would line up with the steering box, and all 4 mounting tabs would seat properly against the sleeves.
After thoroughly cleaning the frame rail, I set the box w/sleeves into position, and tack welded the sleeves into position from the inside of the frame.
Next, I removed the steering box and made a card board template of the boxing plate and transferred the pattern to a piece of 1/4" plate.
Finally, it needed to be welded. I removed the plate and had an experienced welder weld the sleeves to the frame first. Then I repositioned the boxing plate, he welded the plate to the frame rail and sleeves.
Finally, the steering box was simply reinstalled using the new 4" grade 8 bolts used earlier.
