Now it has to be said beforehand: Given the era in which this car was designed, the steering box is definitely en par with what would be fitted to a Series Land Rover or Jeep of the same vintage. But fortunately it's not the 1970ies anymore and Comrade was fitted with the deluxe French steering box, which was rather vague from the and has a very slow ratio. (But is admittedly quite a bit lighter than the stocker that I fitted in its place.) Unfortunately not only was it worn quite badly, but also rustproofing the underside of the car.
For rather obvious reasons, when digging into the steering, there's little point in not swapping all the tie rods at the same time. When browsing around for spare parts, I found these reinforced track rod nuts. It should be rather apparent that they are quite a bit beefier than the stock bits (on the left), but also should save me from a bit of headache down the line considering that they fully enclose the thread and with some rather generous application of anti-seize adjusting the toe-in should still be doable without massive headaches in a year or two.
Surprisingly the old stuff came apart with relative ease.
Installation of the actual steering box though, is truly a two person job and yes the nuts have to be on the side of the wheel or you lose a lot of steering angle.
And with the steering done and the wheels aligned, it was time to do a bit more cosmetics. The steel wheels are pretty awesome - heavy, robust and... rusty.
A bit of black (gloss) Hammerite makes them look a million times better though.
And three and a half cans of underseal later, the underside of the car looked the part again as well.
Finally Comrade car wears his best clothes and looks the part.
But will it pass the Austrian MOT, the infamous Pickerl?
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