[AJD] Model L steering box

[Michael Dixon]

This has been a very interesting thread. I have no doubt at all that the 
resourcefulness already demonstrated will result in a good solution to this 
problem. My knowledge of this steering box is like that of Mr. Weeks below. 
Sometimes ideas from the fringe stimulate thinking. First, the Chevy cars of 
the 1930's and 1940's used this style bearing for the front wheels, but they 
were much larger bearings. In an imported car I had, the distributor used a 
plastic retainer to hold steel balls for the thrust bearing for the advance 
plate within the distributor. It was hard plastic, more like phenolic. When 
the retainer broke, the plate jammed and the advance mechanism no longer 
worked. I sanded a piece of Teflon to the same thickness of the diameter of 
the bearing balls and then jigsawed the Teflon to the required shape for the 
appication. It worked well. Teflon has greater heat resistance, but for 
cooler applications, Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene has great 
mechanical strength and is lower cost. UMHWPE also has low coefficient of 
friction, slightly greater than Teflon. One thought is to get new bearing 
balls of the correct diameter and machine a retainer of UMHWPE to hold the 
spacing of the balls. Injection molding of such a retainer would be 
wonderful and result in low cost per part. But the tooling would be 
prohibitive. I know this problem will be solved.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Howard Weeks" <weeksh at bellsouth.net>
To: "Antique John Deere mailing list" 
<antique-johndeere at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: [AJD] Model L steering box


> Folks,
>
> I have never looked at one of these boxes or bearings, but -