Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 15:29:28 +0100 (BST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "M.Grant" <mty016@coventry.ac.uk>
Subject:      Re: Cannot remove steering arm! Help!

On Sat, 6 May 1995, Nicholas Durie wrote:

> Can anybody offer any suggestions or if they have heated up 
> the steering arm before tell me how the seals faired?

Struggling with the drop arm on the steering box seems to have
become a biannual struggle for me. I have tried heating the arm,
and I also put a load of sheet metal behind it to try and protect
the seals from (direct) heating. The seals faired ok but in my case 
this failed to get the arm off anyway and I resorted to the rather brutal 
method of draining the box, removing the kidney shaped cover, pushed the  
arm right up to the box and put the nut back on the output shaft to 
protect the threads  and then hit the thing as square as possible. The 
shaft and drop arm seperated on the 2nd hit. I would only recommend this 
as a last resort as, like I said, its fairly brutal. This was done on an 
early (up to '71) style box. I'm not sure how it would work on a later 
version.

When putting the drop arm back on, don't over torque it. The torque
setting is suprisingly low (I can't remember it of the top of my
head), and you could try using something like Copperslip on the
splines maybe.

Marcus
'71 bus (no floor, no engine :() 
 bah humbug.
__
Marcus Grant
mty016@uk.ac.cov