The F1 I'm rehabilitating will now get power steering ... ala Toyota ... but with its own shop built mount, and a different approach on the pitman arm. The following photo shows how it fits. The second and third photos show the mount. So far .... it is working out pretty decently.

RG in Spokane




Box mounted ..... the pitman arm is a much modified 73-77 Monte Carlo / Chevelle unit.



Mount .... shop built ... and uses some 4130 steel to keep things light, but very strong.



How the mount fits on the box. Tight fit, but works, and makes use of two of the original mounting holes
in the truck frame. Two more frame holes will be drilled to complete the attachment.

 

Very Nice...the mount looks like a factory option. Good work!

 

Great work RG less time on install that the other method which, I'm using.

 

What are the thicknesses of the steel pieces you used?

 

The plate that fits against the frame, and the material used for the shaped gussets are 3/16" 4130. The piece that is the central rib the box bolts to is 1/4" 1018 mild steel. I'm guessing the use of the 4130 is not really all that necessary if you are careful to do good welds, and maybe increase the thickness by a 1/32, but I had some of the 4130, and knew it would be more than strong enough. It's kind of scary to go buy some of that now though .... I've had this stuff in the inventory for years. The bends in the gussets were done on a Hossfeld Bender ... which if you've been around a while, you've probably seen in old metal shops at schools, and in some rod shops. I got mine at a garage sale about 3 years ago. The seller had no idea of the real value of it, and sold it very cheap. The 4130 could be bent in those rounded shapes without something of that style of bender, but not easily.

RG

 

Very Nice - Another good approach

 

Now thats good work. Looks great

 

So how is the pitman arm modified? It looks way shorter than the stock ford one....T/M

 

The arm has the Toyota splines grafted in the big end. I milled that end out and after cutting the Toyota splined end off, I machined it to a round size I could then press in place in the GM arm. I also added some bevels on the edges, and drilled a couple of holes in the GM big end for button welds. The last step was to TIG weld the splined piece into place. It welded up very nicely ... almost like doing stainless. The GM arm is a forged steel piece, and is of some pretty good stuff evidently. Once it was all welded, I used a big heating tip on my torch, and got the whole arm warmed up well, and then stuffed it in a big can of sand to slowly cool and anneal. That gets rid of any welding stress, which is a good idea to remember for any such work on steering components.

The length for the arm is virtually identical to the F1 arm from center to center, and has just the right offset plus the correct tapered end hole for a ball I found to use. Not sure what the ball came from, but in time I'll figure that out. The GM arm just looks shorter because of the extra beef it has.
This GM arm is unfortunately a bit rare to find, but does the job. It is not one that has been reproduced .... GM calls it a "no wear" item, so
no repros are out there that I've found anyway.

 

What year is your F1 and have you thought about making and selling these? Thanks Randy

 

I guess you could call my F1 a 48, 49, 50, 51, 52??? (grin) It started out as a 48, but pieces from all the years have ended up in the mix. The frame is still 48, and about 60 % of the cab is still 48, as is the front clip, but after that it is from all the years.

I've been asked to produce the mount and the pitman arm before, but have concluded that being in my geezer years, I'm way too slow and detail obsessed to ever make it worth the effort, and if I were to charge by the hour, no one would buy the things anyway. It was just a fun exercise in design and fabrication that kind of got out of control pretty fast. Everything turned out pretty decently though.

Thanks for your interest.

RG in Spokane

 

Wow this looks great! Do you have any drawings of this mount? Would you mind if I use your design? Great work!

 

Very nice, looks compact. I'm interested also if you have a drawing for it and don't mind being copied. I could make you an Autocad drawing for it.

 

What version of AutoCAD are you using? I'm using AutoCAD 2011.

 

If you guys get this in AutoCAD I would love to get a copy.