LQ4 into a 3rd Gen/1972 Nova by frojoe

6 minute(s) of a 891 minute read

A small update from a while ago... I wanted to give the interior of the car a bit more of a 'classic' feel, which meant going back to a good 'ol Hurst chrome shift lever and ball ****.

Next up was a new steering box, but in order to install it I had to pull the steering column.. which was a perfect time to rebuild my tilt column and figure out why the tilt mechanism was nice and tight, but the steering wheel would wobble all over the place.

At first glance the top column shaft bearing looked ok.....

But as I removed it, the cage was damn near ready to disintegrate, and the ***** were falling out too easily..

Then I started finding loose *****, and chunks of bearing race on the bottom...

And here was the bottom bearing, or what was left of it...

Here is the top and bottom steering shaft bearings....

I ordered two new GM steering column bearings, and reassembled....

Next came the new Lee's steering box. I wanted to install a cooler for it to keep it as alive as possible, as well the steering box is a finger-gap away from a heat-wrapped downpipe, so wanted to keep it from superheating the steering fluid.

I had lots of Earl's -10AN UltraPro hose and hose ends left over from the twin turbo build, so decided to use that to make sure the restriction is as minimal as possible, and to have some extra steering fluid volume in the system.

I was previously using an industrial hydraulic -6 JIC "long elbow" at the steering box, and I was going to keep the pressure hose, and I needed a way to step the inverted flare box port up to a -10 male.. so I welded an adapter fitting together...

Next, I needed a way to step the -10 cooler lines back down to the 3/8" barb that's on the steering reservoir return. I also wanted a fixture point for the cooler lines, so that there could be flex between the engine (P/S reservoir) and where the cooler lines were almost-rigidly attached to the subframe.

I decided to make a bracket using existing rivnuts in the subframe, to act as a fixturing bracket to hold a custom step-down line adapter buklhead fitting, as well as force a bend in a 3/8" rubber line linking to the reservoir return...