Over the weekend, I decided to check level of the gear oil in my 1954 F100's steering gear box. It looked very low, so I squirted some gear oil in the inlet port. A few seconds later it came out of the adjustment screw area. Is this normal, or am I missing some kind of seal?

 

I have the same trouble with mine. I dont know if there is a seal
in there or not.an old time mechanic at work said to forget the oil and take your grease gun and fill it with grease and forget about it.
I havent tried that yet tho.but sounds good to me.
Ron

 

There is no seal on the adjusting screw, but it's pretty easy to fix the problem with Permatex or your favorite equivalent. Take the locking nut off the adjusting screw, and back the screw all the way out. Put some sealant all the way around the screw and run it back in. Make the normal steering box adjustment and the sealant should set up and keep the oil inside.

On a related note, mose of the threaded holes in the steering box casting are through holes. Whenever you take one of these buggers apart, it's a really good idea to use a sealant on all the bolt threads to keep the oil from seeping out the threads. I didn't do that the first time I reassembled mine and I had the one-drop-per-week leak at about three of the 8 or 10 bolts. After taking it apart, cleaning it (again ), and putting it back together with the sealant, I don't have even a wet spot anywhere on the box. I'm using standard 90 weight gear oil.

 

Cdn Eh and George:
Thanks for your replies!
Cdn-
Whoever told you about putting a grease fitting on the gearbox must have owned mine, because that is what was on it! But being reluctant to any modifications I took it off and swapped it for a plug from one of my (2) other gear boxes.

George-
As you can see, I have (3) gear boxes to play with. One has a nut as you described. The other two are "keyed" (slotted) for a locking wheel. I don't know if my terminology is correct, but you are smart enough to figure out what I am referring to.
Anyway, the keyed shafts are the ones that really leak like a sieve! The one without the slot is the most worn out, so I don't want to use it.
Have you been successful in sealing up the "keyed" ones? If so, what sealant do you recommend? If you can, be specific. In my line of work, I can get any sealant that is made, for free.

 

Haven't done a keyed unit. The stuff I used is Permatex® High Performance Thread Sealant, part number 56521 (50 ml) or 25117 (6 ml). Worked very well for me on a whole range of thread sealing jobs (rear axle, steering box, transmission, etc.). Check out their web site:

Permatex

 

Thanks for the input. I'll give it a try. By the way. How much 90W gear oil are you supposed to use in these boxes? My guess is that you should fill it up to the bottom of the adjustment screw hole. I actually wonder if Ford intenually left a seal off of that area so you could not overfill the box.
One last thing. the keyed adjustment screw has a cap nut that covers the groove. So if I seal the screw and the cap nut, I should stop the leak. I'll let you know.

 

My shop manual says to fill it up to the level of the fill plug, so that's what I did.