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An upgrade to the steering system to deal with the additional force
applied by the new AGR Superbox 2 and AGR pump was a brace for the
AGR gearbox. I had already installed an aftermarket heavy duty
gearbox mounting bracket and I wanted to brace the box a little
more with a gearbox brace. For the Jeep CJs, I've seen two type of
braces, one brace that clamps to the face of the gearbox and another
that clamps to the neck of the gearbox where the pitman arm
attaches. In my opinion the better brace is the one that braces where the
applied force pivots and that is at the output shaft of the
gearbox. As I was prepared to purchase of of these braces, I
was looking at pictures of them and realized, it's such a simple
brace that I could easily make one and save about a hundred bucks.
The parts I needed were quite simple and no welding was
required. All I needed was a 1 ¼" diameter steel tube
(thick walled is better), some stock steel at 1"x¼"
around a foot long and 3 pair of grade 8 nuts and bolts. That's it besides a can of spray paint.
The process of making
this brace went something like this:
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Aftermarket gearbox
mounting bracket
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First thing was to make up the clamp that is pictured to the
right. This is the tough part relative to the other steps and
may take a few tries to get it right. I used my vice and a
hammer to bend these two halves around a piece of scrap tubing that
had the same diameter as the neck of the gearbox where it will clamp
around.
DO NOT hammer it around your gearbox! Use something you don't
care about like some scrap steel.
Be aware that you will be bolting this around your gearbox neck
just above the pitman arm and the pipe that runs up to the frame
rail will be flattened on the one end and sandwiched in between the
2 halves of the clamp. So just make sure you allow for that
pipe to be there and still be able to clamp down on the neck of the
gearbox. Then you drill holes though it as pictured to the
right.
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Once you have the clamp made, the next step is to make the
pipe. The pipe which basically is the brace, runs from the
neck of the gearbox (held to the neck with the brace), to the
passenger side frame rail. I cut a piece of "black
pipe" used in plumbing (I think for gas lines too) which I
bought at the hardware store. I then cut it a little longer
than what I'd need. Hold it up to see what that length is. The
trick here is to flatten the pipe at the clamp side and drill a hole
through it so it can be bolted between the halves of the clamp. (See
picture to the right, click it for a close up).
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Another view. Don't make your tabs in the clamp too short or
you won't have enough to drill and bolt through.
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The next step is to run the pipe up to an unused threaded hole in
the frame rail with it bolted loosely to the clamp and attached to
the neck of the gearbox. Estimate the area where you need to
flatten the pipe and take note of the angle of the area you need to
flatten. The angle will be about 90 degrees off of your other
flattened area at the gearbox.
Note: you should have an unused threaded hole in the frame
rail. If for some reason you do not, you can remove an
existing bolt in the area across from the gearbox and get a longer,
grade 8 bolt and use that hole instead.
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Unbolt the clamp from the gearbox and flatten the other end.
Again, make sure you get the right angle of the flattened area so it
will lay flat on the frame rail over an existing hole (or re-used
hole).
Next, re-bolt it all up again. You may need to do this a
few times to hammer the flattened area exactly how you want it.
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The next step is to bolt it all up again and center punch a mark
over the hole you will use. Then disassemble it again and
drill a hole in the flattened pipe.
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Finally, paint it, and bolt it up a final time.
The only difference between this and the one you can buy for
about 100 buck is that the one you can buy uses two bolt holes at
the frame rail with a steel plate welded to the end of the steel
tube. My thoughts on that is if my steering box moves at all
with the new gearbox mounting bracket, it's very, very slight
movement. the shearing point of a 7/16" grade 8 bolt is
extremely high, in the 10's if not 100's of thousands of
pounds. IF I ever reached that point, something else is going
to break, not this bolt.
Overall this project took only an hour or two minus dry time for
the paint. An hour or two of my time to save 100 bucks is worth it to
me. I've used the Jeep hard since then and the steering
gearbox has been rock solid.
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Home-built
Serious Skid-Plate protection for the Oil Pan for under 20
bucks!
