Was raining on and off today so I went out to the shop and worked a little on the 149. I have had the parts in for a while now, so I decided to go ahead and get the steering column rebuilt. I did not take as many pics as I wanted to, because tearing it apart, cleaning it, and then reassemblying it was a dirty greasy job, I would have spent then entire afternoon washing my hands to get more pics of it. I see that I did neglect to get pics of the new parts, I got the steering upgrade kit from Mark Hellrung here is the link for it:
http://ihcubcadetparts.net46.net/1_2_Products.html
it is about half way down the page, it includes 3 washers, a bearing, and a nylon lock nut. These parts replace the double jamb nuts and washer on the side of the steering box, supposed to make steering effort less by adding the bearing, makes sense that it will. I also got a new seal for the steering box from CC Specialties, here is the link to it:
http://ccspecialties.org/steeringseal.jpg
First off I took it completely apart, cleaned up all the old grease, and dried all the parts. A parts washer would have been nice for this step, the old grease was a pain to get out of there, I used what I had, a bucket with some diesel fuel in it. Here is a pic of all the cleaned parts.
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I notice the worm gear follower had some wear on it, remember seeing a thread where someone said they trued theirs up in a drill press with a file. I don't have a drill press either, so I chucked it up my 1/2" drill and went at it with a file. After trying that for about 10 minutes, it was working, but would take at least an hour more to get the burrs removed. I then decided I would try the 4" grinder on it, while spinning it in the drill. This turned out to be a good idea, had it deburred and trued up in about 5 minutes. Here is some pics of the method I used as well as the after shot of the follower. (yes in the pics everything is stationary, I was the only person there, someone had to take the pics!)
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If you look at the overall shot of the cleaned up parts, you will notice that one of the palstic bearing retainers would not keep the bearings in place. I did not have a replacement, but figure the main reason it is there, besides holding the bearings in place, was to keep the bearings evenly spaced around the shaft. Well it would still work for that, so upon reassembly, I used grease to hold the bearings in place in it while I put it in place, it worked out fine, non issue. I used an old (but good) front wheel bearing at the top of the column. It fit loosely in the column, so I took a chisle and slightly bent the top of the column over in 4 evenly spaced spots, this allowed the bearing to fit tightly into the top of the column. Here is some pics of the column after it was completely reassembled, one more item to check of the need to do list!
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I forgot to mention, that I hit with a coat of semi-gloss black paint, I wiped down the entire column with some lacquer thinner, then shot it with a spray can. You will only see the very end of it once it is in the tractor. It is good enough to make it look clean and keep the rust at bay.