1956 Buick - Jeep steering box upgrade

[Dean Kenyon]

Ok, so I wanted to make a little write up with pictures on how I made a 1999-04 jeep Cherokee steering box work on my 1956 Buick special.  There is no direct bolt on way of making this work , I had to get creative. I'm super happy with how it turned out. It was well worth the work and the car handles great now and had no play in the steering. 

The first thing I had to do was get the steering box. I got it used on eBay for $85 with free shipping..Next, I got a power steering pump and a power steering cooler . My car has a 5.3 with th400 transmission I swapped in a couple years ago so I got a stock 2001 Chevy truck steering pumpNext, I removed the old power steering pump and compared the two units and noticed the bolt holes for mounting to the frame are completely different. However the splines for the pitman arm is the same which have me hope that it would actually work out.Then I took both pitman arms off which was a challenge but I was able to remove them both without heating and messing up the pitman arm seal. The reason I did not rebuild the old saganaw steering pump is because parts are hard to find (pretty much obsolete) and It was super sloppy. Almost 20 degrees of play at steering wheel. I also wanted a better steering ratio that the newer boxes have. You can also see how much bigger the old box is. Not too mention how much heavier it is.Above picture is the old pitman arm on the jeep steering boxAt this point I went ahead and mounted the steering cooler and power steering pump and bracket . Had to trim the battery tray. Of you are still running a Nailhead this part will be different obviously.The next problem I faced was that the input shaft for the old and newer boxes were different. The old Buick box has a splined shaft , While the Jeep box has the DD shaft. I wanted to keep my original column and steering wheel so I needed to make this work. I then ordered a 1957 Chevy car Rag joint because one side has the DD shaft I needed. However, on the Chevy joint it is reversed than what is needed to make it work. The DD flange is on steering column . So I reversed it and had to grind a little on the flange to make it work on the steering box sideI used blue locktite  to make sure the set screws would not back out. Now I was ready to bolt up Rag joint and figure out how I was going to build the adapter plate to mount the box.I found the correct bolt size needed for the Jeep box , pictured aboveNext , I made a bracket out of 3/16 plate for the lower bolts. iI also made a plate for the original bolt holes on the frame and bolted the Jeep box back up to the column and basically connected the dots.. used a piece of 3/8 plate to connect the two plates and make up for the difference in width of the Jeep box versus the original. Only one bolt was able to go into the original location. So I had to make another little adapter plate for the 3rd bolt . this is how I made the other adapter plate. Drilled a hole , then welded but in plate. I used 1/2 grade 8 bolts on the adapter side of the plates. Then I painted the brackets and attached them just finger tight so I could move around as needed during installation.

You can see I used a spacer for the one hole that lined up with original hole. I used 2001 Chevy truck steering lines . Also forgot to mention earlier that I used blue locktite on everything. It works great . No more clunks and sketchy steering. The car is way more fun to drive .

Hope You found this interesting.