[adam woodmancy]

Hello everyone, I am not sure if this has been covered on here or not, but I found threads about it on sites such as Yellowbullet with conflicting reports, so I thought I would share my experience and hopefully help the next guy do it a little quicker. My 72 LeMans was originally a power steering car, and I have been running it for years with the stock box and no pump. I have the motor out and was able to do some trading for a old S-10 steering box that I though may or may not fit depending on where/what you read. So here's the facts. the metric box i used is the 4 bolt cover version, casting # 7843962 (there is also a 3 but I believe it requires a different pitman arm) This box weighed approx 7 lbs less than my stock ps box, and is clearly smaller. It bolts right in to the stock location, and used the original A-body power steering pitman arm. Many people on other forums said this was the case, but here's where it got confusing. My stock PS rag joint was too big of diameter to fit the metric rag joint, The metric joint is 3/4" diameter , and the stock p.s. rag joint i believe is 13/16" dia. I had a brand new a-body rag joint at home which is 3/4" so I grabbed it, but the spline count was wrong. Thankfully the metric box came with the lower part of the steering shaft, and I was able to break it down and use the metric rag joint/lower shaft in conjunction with the stock a-body upper shaft. I believe the stock A-body manual joint is 3/4"-36 spline, and the metric joint is 3/4" -26 spline. I got it in easily enough and it was fairly straight forward, just had conflicting sources on the rag joint going into it. I hope this helps someone in the future interested in doing this swap. The first pic is of the stock p.s. box and you can note the size difference, as it goes past the rear of the pitman arm.