Re: SER1 Lake Payne Engineering Workshop

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Hi Alan & Diana

I can add a little more to this discussion on steering box nuts. From memory
there were Oversize nuts available. Oversize in the way of external diameter
of the nut, the internal thread being standard. I guess the theory being the
nut wears the housing out. I remember rebuilding my 80" steering box (about
ten years ago) with one of these nuts, I believe it had 010 stamped on it,
and having the box machined out to take the nut.

The Series One Club in New Zealand looked at having nuts remanufactured at
about the same time, but the first brick wall we came to was the large
amount of certification/engineering reports etc required as it was a
steering/brake part being remanufactured. This was to satisfy local safety
laws, heaven knows what it would require for international sales. We didn't
proceed.

A helpful tip with these boxes is many later 80" boxes suffer from hair-line
cracks where the steel tube is riveted into the alloy box. I actually had a
box completely fail with me once when the tube parted from the box. Complete
loss of steering. This happened in a difficult off-road section, and would
likely only occur in such a situation.

Early 80" boxes are made of bronze and not alloy, and appear not to crack.
It pays to keep an eye for these early bronze boxes, I've seen several
amongst piles of used SI boxes at various L/R dismantlers over the years.

Philip Avery
NZ



----- Original Message -----
From: Allan Harding <Allan.Harding@xxx.xxx.xx>
To: <series1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: SER1 Lake Payne Engineering Workshop


>     G'Day Diana,
>     I appreciate your problem with steering box nuts. Part of the
> problem with these is that  the worm wears as well so that an undersize
> nut would end up tight at the ends and loose in the middle position
> (where most of the wear naturally occurs). The nuts are difficult to
> make in any case as they "feature" a five start thread. This is a very
> time consuming process on a lathe and it would most likely take all day
> to make ONE nut. Work it out at about $100/hour for machine shop time.
>     We had a go at repro nuts a couple of years back using a CNC lathe
> and the result was no good due to the way that these lathes work when
> cutting threads, especially very course ones such as these are.
>     There is a solution to your problem though, you can obtain these
> parts from Steering Services in London. Refer to the parts suppliers
> section in the LRSOC web site for details. These steering boxes were
> made by Burman and similar Burman steering boxes were used on many
> British cars of the pre WWII and just post WWII era. (Burman also made
> motorcycle gearboxes). The owner of the business (Steering Services) has
> a tap for the 80" Land Rover steering box nuts. Manufacture of the tap
> was very expensive and he has stated that if it were to break, then that
> would be it for 80" Land Rover steering box nuts as far as he is
concerned.
>     Undersize nuts are not a goer for two main reasons, wear on the worm
> and cost of a tap for each undersize produced.
>     I did think about doing a tap myself at one stage (we have the
> technology), but the cost would have to be passed on buyers of nuts to
> some extent and the fact that there is only a market here for several
> per year convinced me that it was a silly idea.
>     Many Aussie restorers seem reluctant to buy parts from the UK,
> agreed they are relatively expensive but they are available and
> centralising the manufacture of parts at least minimises costs (as in
> steering box nuts etc.). Don't be put off by the prospect of paying
> duties and taxes. In theory, there is no duty for these old parts but
> there is GST payable. In practice, keep your purchases to relatively
> small batches of parts (say a maximum of  £200) and specify to the
> supplier that the parts must be posted air mail, ie. not courier or any
> other form of delivery service, but the British version of Australia Post.
>     Re odd number of threads on the nut, in this case five start, I am
> at the moment making tools for dismantling the propellor of a certain
> type of famous British WWII fighter, the castellated nut for retaining
> the blades in the constant speed unit (hub) has 17 castellations. Only
> the British would think of such a number. Features like this would have
> really got under the aversaries skin if they had had to work on them if
> things had turned out differntly.
>     Cheers
>     Allan
>     Canberra, Australia
>
>
> To change subscription see www.landrover.net/series1/mail
>
>
>
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