Pulled the steering box because I'd noticed that it had play in it pretty much everywhere. Need to find a shipping box the right size to ship it over to Lee PS to get it rebuilt. Figure that I'll have the pump done at the same time. The mounting bracket has seen some drama and now has significant gussets on it. Appears that I've yet to take a pic of that.
Unfortunately that serves to really bury the steering box mounting bolts. Whomever last put it together used some very nice reduced head 12 pt. bolts, but the top bolt is way down a tunnel thru the front bumper bracket and it was really hard to get the socket on it.
From my days in Square Body GM trucks/Subs I've learned that short bolts, as these are, are not necessarily the best idea. Longer bolts are less likely to snap from a brief over-load than are short bolts. I plan to make steel spacers, weld them in, and use longer L9/F911 bolts.
Rag Joint replacement spacer:
Column end:
While I was removing the steering box I noticed that the intermediate shaft had a lot of slop in it too. Looks like someone did the XJ steering shaft mod, and then later someone (else?) eliminated the rag joint and replaced it with a spacer. I ordered the parts to put a complete Borgeson intermediate shaft in there with the U-J at the box having a vibration reducing coupling. I really couldn't figure out what the bottom end of the column shaft was, so I included a 3/4-36 splined shaft in the order and I'll convert the bottom of the column to that.
Do I need to pull the whole column to get at the shaft, or can I pull the shaft out thru the engine bay once the steering wheel is removed?