A Cautionary Tale

[Flintdog2011]

So I took a buddy for a ride today and had an "episode".
We had gone a couple of miles up the road, turned around, and headed back to the house. I hit a nice long straight and opened it up. Went through the gears and having a big time. I slowed back down to a responsible speed and went through a few curves. Just beyond the curves, on another short straight, I felt a very small change in the steering pressure. As I made a small correction, I noticed that while turning the wheel to the left, the truck wanted to drift off to the right. I made a larger correction with no noticeable difference. I made an even larger correction, and then the adrenalin started to kick in. The steering wheel wasn't doing anything!! I stood on the brakes as we departed the road. Luckily we weren't going very fast and the shoulder of the road was relatively level.
When we stopped, (and after cleaning the poo from my underwear!), I opened the hood and found that the coupler had come off the steering box! Then I remembered that I didn't loctite the stud when I changed out the steering box.
A nice old fella in a house across the road let me borrow a hex wrench and some pliers to reattach the coupler. Drove it on home and immediately pulled all the coupler bolts loose and reapplied loctite to each one.
Could have been bad, but I guess clean living' and a clear conscience paid off!
Make sure to loctite all bolts on your steering!!

 

[rydog1130]

will do!

 

[thegreatjustino]

How can the coupler possibly come off? The input shaft to the box is over an inch long. Your steering shaft would have to slide up an inch against gravity in order for that to happen.

 

[Flintdog2011]

It happened!! Only thing I can figure is the retaining stud had backed out past the land on the steering box shaft due to vibration and when I "briskly accelerated" it popped off.

 

[sanndmann3]

Could have been ugly, glad it wasn't. thanks for passing along the the experience.
I usually check nuts and bolts on my supension/powertrain once a year 'cause I flog it pretty hard... and that connection to the list.

 

[DonaldDouchebag]

I just swapped a new box in this week. After reading this harrowing tale I'm going to loctite it right now.

 

[langester]

Good info, glad everything went okay. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[ared77]

Glad both of you are OK. Whew!

 

[Pa PITT]

... OK I'M Selling Bumper Stickers to cover your story...
... ''Shit HAPPENS''
... Crazy how things that shouldn't ever happen does at time. Glad you landed safe!!.

 

[MarsChariot]

I'm setting the Loctite on the workbench tonight so that I remember to check those tomorrow! I always wondered about that happening, especially with those little allen head screws.

 

[hucklburry rev2]

Is it a 66 box? Some don't have a slot for the bolt, its just splined all the way around, I swapped to a later box, sometime a 66 will strip splines or skip a few.

 

[Flintdog2011]

It is a Borgeson box with the groove. I always thought that little Allen head bolt to hold it together was a weird design, but never had any trouble with em until today.

 

[sprdv1]

Glad it wasn't worst.. Cleaned out the shorts when you got home too right LOL

 

[Billsboat]

Glad u r around to tell the story!

 

[broncoman805]

Happened to me several years ago. I was going pretty fast up a wash, went to make a turn and the Bronco wanted to go straight �� , took me a few seconds to realize something was wrong after turning the wheel several times around, weird feeling. I can laugh about it now.��

 

[Broncobowsher]

Did that once coming home from work. I had been doing some tuning of the steering (adjusting the heim joint positions) and got sloppy about nylocs or cotter pins in the linkage. Well it got pretty good and I never got back to it. Lost the nut on the right knuckle. Doing 60 MPH and all of a sudden the steering did nothing. On the brakes and into the right ditch. Both front wheels were toed out to the stops. The long bolt was still through both heims and the linkage was pointing straight out the front of the rig. I had a spare ¾ nut that put everything back together. Drove home and put in some cotter keys.