1958 International Harvester A-110 pickup. It's gotten to the point where it isn't any fun to drive anymore. Always runs great, but stopping and steering is ass-puckering at best, even after some major going over. So I'm upgrading a few things, but hopefully without losing the old work truck feel. IH rebuild services and parts are either very expensive or just plain obsolete as you can imagine. So I'm starting with steering. Lots of creative setups on similar Ford and Chevy trucks of similar vintage, from Toyota box to R&P conversions. I think I've decided to tackle a cross steer type setup using a Saginaw 525 box and losing the sloppy (Ross?) box and drag link. Searching the web sent me down a rabbit hole that pretty much brought me back to the H.A.M.B. and popular gasser steering idears. Lots of space (relatively) behind the oil pan and axle, so rear steer is likely. Found this pic that most resembles what I'd like to do: Of course I don't have a source for a steering arm with the 2nd location for a drag link (like above) but I have seen the 4wd guys using a Jeep style tie rod end like this: This kinda makes the tie rods into a "Y" configuration instead of being parallel. Is that a problem? My Saginaw box will need to mount at an angle suitable enough to allow for me to catch the column that I will be cutting at the firewall to install a short "D" shaft and Borgeson universals similar to the setup above. Am I overlooking any shortcomings using the Jeep style tie rod end? How does pitman arm length and angle affect correct geometry here? Advice/insight/pics appreciated...
Look at off-road Suzuki Samurai tie-rods. Very similar but the toe adjustment is at one end only. If you have a "Suzuki" style toe adjustment you could weld a double shear bracket onto the tie-rod high enough to allign with the pitman arm and have bump clearance
Love BinderPlanet and OldIHC. Read the boards all the time and learned a lot about my truck over the years. It seems either guys are struggling to keep them on the road with un-obtainium IH replacement parts (like I was) or wanting to drop an LS into them (ugh). Great IH websites... not a lot of help with direction I'm going in unfortunately.
I would be looking at fabricating a two hole steering arm as per your picture out of 7/16" or 1/2" angle iron using the original arms for measurements so you end up with something like this.
Gotta love the old binder trucks! I had a '56 that I shouldn't have ever sold... but, like you mentioned, just got totally discouraged due to the non-existence of replacement parts. Best of luck!
the photo you posted is from my 37 Chevy coupe build, I used steering arms like those posted by Brading from Speedway Motors,...all my steering rods came from there also, used 5/8th heim joints,..try to keep the two steering rods parallel looking at them from the front .the whole thing worked out easily and I could steer with two fingers, no bump steer at all. you could make those steering arms as don't think the Speedway ones would bolt on to an IH, good luck.
Had you thought about just disassembling your steering box to see where the wear is? I used a Ross steering box from a 58 Hawk on my 53, it was worn. I put new bushings in (had a machine shop ream them to fit the shaft) and a new seal, almost like new, accept, power steering would be better.
So looking into steering arms... On a tip from an old, old post on one of the IH forums, someone in a land far, far away said he bolted up a set of those flat style steering arms DIRECTLY to the spindles on an IH pickup. What? Crazier shit has happened. Without digging into my hoard for a pair of 49-52 Chevy spindles, I hurriedly pulled some dimensions from the web for both the Chevy passenger car spindles and 41-68 International light duty pickups... I'll be damned... within a 1/16 of each other!! Can only Heim joints be used with these flat style steering arms? Adjustment for Ackerman? Found plenty of (forged?) arms for cross steer on early Ford spindles (to use ball style TREs)... has no one ever made similar steering arms for the Chevy spindles?? That seems crazy... even I have a set of Chevy and Ford round-backs in my hoard and I've never owned either!! Regularly driven... I'm more inclined to stick with ball style TREs....?????
I was always under the impression that plain old Heim joints didn’t do well in street driven vehicles with typical road grime and rain, dirt, shock loads, etc, etc. There’s a reason they aren’t used in production vehicles.
That's my understanding as well. Here I am, excited as hell that something popular might possibly work on this ole IH pickup... ...and NOBODY makes arms for the (2nd?) most popular straight axle that take ball style TREs??? DEVASTATED. Why is this?? Surely folks with Chevy pickups and T-bucket or whoever else wants to run Chevy axles on the street and converts to cross steer would like to have that option.......??????
49-54 Chevy CAR steering arms are forged an use a normal tie rod end. Why can't you use those with the jeep style rod end you posted above? I am using them on my < coupe(chevy axle), but with side steer instead
...for some reason those flat steering arms are set up to use the heim joints, mine worked great but I never drove it in crappy weather for a couple decades to check the life span on them. spose you could drill the holes with a taper bit and use regular joints, shouldn't be too difficult, then they'd have grease zerks as well.
If you want to use the flat steering arms with TRE's you could weld another bit of metal on then to get the same thickness as the originals then drill and taper ream them to take the TRE's.
On BRADING's suggestion, I started a search for a couple pair of used flat steering arms thinking that I could stack and weld at least most of 2 arms together making them thick enough to take reaming for ball style TREs. Came across this lot of billet steel beauties: A fellow HAMBer (a60sracer) had these in the classified section. Wish I was building a TROG. Cool early racing stuff in his hoard! Excellent communication. Graciously answered all my questions. Bought matching set "A" and "C". Putting them in the mail for me tomorrow. So "A" and "C" measure out to be close enough in measurements to my IH spindles to take a chance on. Certainly thick enough to ream for TREs. Probably could take a little bending if heated. If they don't fit...well...they'll go in the box with Chevy spindles for a future project!!
The Jalopy Journal
