LoneCabbage
New Member
Hey all,
Long-time lurker here—finally wanted to contribute something. While doing a front disc brake conversion and suspension rebuild on my ’70 340 Cuda, I ran into a headache with the steering gear install.
At the last minute, I decided to rebuild the gear and coupler—figured I might as well finish the job right. When I pulled the steering gear, I noticed the lower tack-welded frame nut was spinning. Not ideal, but manageable with a wrench.
Then came the real problem: while reinstalling, the upper driver’s side nut broke loose and dropped inside the K-frame. As many of you know, that nut is nearly impossible to access—especially with the gear in place.
I started looking around forums, and the common fix was to drop the K-frame and cut an access hole to re-weld the nut. After the car had been down for a couple of months and was so close to being done, that was the last thing I wanted to do. So... I cracked a beer (because all great redneck engineering starts with one) and came up with a workaround that actually worked great.
Here’s my workaround:
Hope this helps someone in the same boat!
Long-time lurker here—finally wanted to contribute something. While doing a front disc brake conversion and suspension rebuild on my ’70 340 Cuda, I ran into a headache with the steering gear install.
At the last minute, I decided to rebuild the gear and coupler—figured I might as well finish the job right. When I pulled the steering gear, I noticed the lower tack-welded frame nut was spinning. Not ideal, but manageable with a wrench.
Then came the real problem: while reinstalling, the upper driver’s side nut broke loose and dropped inside the K-frame. As many of you know, that nut is nearly impossible to access—especially with the gear in place.
I started looking around forums, and the common fix was to drop the K-frame and cut an access hole to re-weld the nut. After the car had been down for a couple of months and was so close to being done, that was the last thing I wanted to do. So... I cracked a beer (because all great redneck engineering starts with one) and came up with a workaround that actually worked great.
Here’s my workaround:
- Cut the closed end off a cheap 13/16" wrench.
- Applied JB Weld to the nut and the inside of the wrench head, and let it set up.
- With some careful finger work, I was just barely able to push the nut/wrench assembly into position and start a bolt to hold it in place.
- To hold it there while finishing the install, I shot expanding foam into the cavity.
- Once cured, I removed the bolt—the nut and wrench stayed perfectly in place.
- Reinstalled the steering gear, and the wrench stub locked itself against the K-frame while I torqued everything down.
Hope this helps someone in the same boat!
