Hi -

I recently replaced the steering gear box of my 1993 S10 Blazer 4x4 Tahoe. The problem is that now the steering wheel in the cabin is roated by 90 degrees when the wheels are pointed straight. I am not sure how to resolve this. I could remove the steering gear box again and rotate the pitman arm pinion 90 degrees but that will also rotate the pinion that attaches to the steering wheel shaft. I could really use some help or guidance on how to realign my steering wheel so that when the wheels are straight I am able to see my instrument cluster clearly.

Thanks,
Juan

 

Mine used to be off a noticeable amount until I got an alignment. If you take it in for an alignment they should center it for you.

BTW heres a site that explains centering the steering wheel.

http://www.familycar.com/alignment.htm

 

Mine is off by 90 degrees. Literally when you are driving down the road in a straight line you cannot see the instrument cluster because brackets that attach the steering wheel to the shaft are in the way. It seems like an awful lot to be able to fix with a simple alignment. Do you think it is possible to fix that by just aligning it? I would gladly pay to have it realigned if they could fix it because it is a real pain to take out that gear box again.

Juan

 

Good point, 90* is a lot to adjust out. I'm not familiar with steering linkage but is it possible you could have something rotated 90* when you reinstalled the gearbox?

Even if it can't be adjusted with an alignment you may be able to talk a mechanic into going ahead and fixing it anyway while you get an alignment.

 

Sounds like you have to remove the bolt that connects the stearing shaft to the stearing box , push it back towards the fire wall with your tires pointed straight then turn your wheel straight then hook it back to the stearing box there will be a flat spot on one side just line it up With your wheels and your stearing wheel lined up and you should be good to go . I just did mine yesterday (pitman arm) it was a peace of cake . I was worried that I might screw mine up but it turned out great .

 

When I replaced the steering gear box I removed the unit from the vehicle with that shaft attached. What I did is disconnect the shaft from the steering wheel up near the firewall. On my model blazer (1993 S10 4x4) there is a linkage in the steering wheel shaft near the firewall so I disconnected that and then unmounted the steering gear box and slid everything out from underneath the truck. The part of the steering wheel shaft that attaches to the steering gear box is keyed as you say. There is really only one position it should go in and I made sure that the two flat parts of the shaft and the pinion on the gear box were lined up properly before attaching the shaft to the gear box and then reinstalling the new gear box. I am going to attempt to fix it this weekend. One my buddies wants to disconnect the steering wheel shaft linkage near the firewall and rotate the wheel a few times to see if we can connect it back with the steering wheel straight and the instrument cluster visible. I have my doubts about whether this will work. I think I am going to have to pull out the whole gear box and then disconnect the pitman arm, and then see if I can locate the correct positions for everything. I am not sure if any of this will work because I already had located the center for the steering gear box. Meaning I counted the total number of turns of the pinion on the gear box and then came back half the number of turns and installed the pitman arm there. If I rotate the pinion the pitman arm attaches to by 90o in either direction the small pinion that the steering wheel shaft connects to will also rotate. So it is not clear this will solve my problem. The other thing I considered was removing the steering wheel from the shaft (no air bags in this model) and then rotating it 90o so that it is centered and re-attaching it to the shaft. This might work but it depends on the design of the steering wheel. I was hoping someone here could at least give me some ideas about what to try.

Thanks,
Juan

 

since this post is a month old , i am interested to know if you got the problem corrected and how? what did you find wrong? when you are talking about the steering wheel being off by 90* it would be this | instead of this -- while this is alot of adjustment in the tie rods, 90* of steering wheel turn is only about 10* of tire turn and this would be too much for an alignment to correct. you would run out of tie rod adjustment. i would like to know how you got it corrected. thanks

 

Cardude59 -

I did get the problem fixed. The response submitted by atvwarrior dated 9/13/2010 was the correct solution. I had connected the steering shaft to the small gear of the steering gear box at the wrong location. The only way to fix it was to remove the steering gear box again (believe me this was a real pain) and reposition the shaft on the pinion when the pitman arm was roughly in the correct position to attach back to the steering mechanism of the vehicle. It is hard to explain and really it sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. The fundamental problem was that because the pitman arm is positioned just above the chasis of the vehicle I could not assemble all the connections with the steering gear box installed on the vehicle. If this were possible I would have been relatively straight forward to line everything up. Instead I had to remove the steering gear box connect the pitman arm and the steering shaft while it was on my work bench (aka garage floor) and then hope that the wheels would align up properly when I reinstalled the gear box on the truck. It took a number of tries but eventually we got it working.