Wrapping up the Steering Gear

As I wrote in the last post, one of the bolts that holds the steering gear on was just spinning in the captured nut that is hidden in the frame.  I was able to get it out but it was not going back in.  I'm not looking to get into restoration work for now.  I just want to get the necessary systems sorted and put the car on the road.  Later on, I plan to take the body down to bare metal and make any necessary repairs.

For now, this is what I came up with.  It should be solid until I decide to repair the nut.

Using a bore-scope, I could see that at least 1/2" of bolt was beyond above the surface of the nut.  I found a nut in my spare nuts/bolts drawer that fit the bolt correctly.  I welded it to some bar stock and now I should be able to just thread it on.  The bar stock will hit the side of a frame wall that will keep it from spinning so I should be able to tighten the bolt no problem. 

I welded a piece of wire to the nut to fish it into the cavity where the nut goes through.  Turned out to be very difficult to get the bolt started.  Messed around with it for at least a couple of hours getting very frustrated but finally, it got it started and then it tightened up as expected.  Not the rack is well secured and I can move onto the brake master cylinder.  I'll post about that tomorrow.

Thanks for looking.