My steering box is centered with the rag bolt pointing up. The column flat is on top. New rag joint, rebuilt gear box. PS pitman arm. Rebuilt control valve.Valve is centered. Why is the passenger side tie rods about out of threads and the driver side has a bunch of threads showing?

 

I am going to hope you are one turn off on the wheel, or your steering wheel is maybe 180* out on it's mounting?? maybe??

at any rate, with the wheel looking straight up, your output pitman arm from the box to the cross link should be pointing straight AFT....inline with the centerline of the car....

at that point, your tie rods should be looking damn close in length....

 

For a while the replacement rag joints were made wrong, they were 180 dgr off. Sounds like you may have one of the bad ones.

 

The rag joint came from the chevy dealer. I don't see how 180 degrees off would do anything except make the short one on the other side.
I thought I was one turn off center and I tryed it one turn in the direction it needed to go. The left tire hit the control valve and the pitman hit the cylinder bracket. So I put it back and still can't make since of it.

 

What your not showing is the inboard end of those tie rods. The long thread outboard could be sucked way in on the inboard side and opposite for the other side. If they were not setup properly when they were initially installed this could be the results. Or when adjusting them they removed one end and just turned the outboard end rather than rotating the rod itself rather then the tie rod ends. These do get rusty so I would bet they took the easy way out and just adjusted the outboard ends.

 

Both tie rod ends are the same. Inner and outer right are about out of threads.
Inner and outer left have probably an inch of threads showing.

 

Just because the machined flat on the shaft (or the bolt groove) are directly on top doesn't mean the steering box is centered. You have to turn the steering box fully to the left, then fully to the right, then find the middle of that number of turns. At that point, you then position the flat (or bolt groove) at the top of the shaft and you have found the center position of the steering box.

You must have been one full turn off in your centering calculations.

 

That's what I thought the first time I had it this way. I drove the car and it pulled to the right. I let the steering wheel go while driveing slow to see where it wanted to go. It mad a full turn. So I thought I was off 1 turn. I put it back on the lift and turned the wheel 1 turn to where I now thought the box was centered. Of cours the tires were now pointing right. So I adjusted the tie rods to get the wheels straight. Then the left tire hit the the control valve when I turned it left. And when I turned it right the Pitman arm hit the cyl bracket.


So I put it back where it was. And it turns the same amount both directions.
This is driving me nuts!

 

They still are! I ordered one from willcox a month ago and its 180dgr off!
They told me to put it on and flip my steering wheel but it sounds like a bad idea!

 

That's horrible advice. The turn signal won't cancel right if you do that. You can take the rag joint apart and re-assemble it correctly.

 

GM still sells the correct one. Worth the $$$.

 

Pitman arm indexed wrong on the sector shaft?

 

The pitman can only be put on in 4 locations at 90 degree intervals. It is pointing forward. Accordinig to some post i read by Jim Shea, it is'nt possible to connect everything together if it is off. I guess if you had the box cranked all the way one direction you might could put the pitman on and hook it up but you would have no travel at all in that direction.

 

You changed two parts (box and rag joint) and now you have a problem. If you still have the old parts compare them if not you just learned a lesson I did a while back.

I would remove the ragjoint and pitman arm. Then center the box. I'll bet the box is not centered correctly from the rebuild.

The sector gear should have a flat spot (key) on it that should point to the back of the car when centered. Then without moving the sector gear see where you wheels windup if you try to put the pitman arm back on.

I received a jeep pwr steering conversion box that was not centered correctly and wound up with tie rods just like yours trying to center it after I was told by their tech support that it was normal to have to take up the centering with the tie rods..... well I sent the box back for a different issue and guess what... that new box was spot on centered.

Your tierods should be about 15" to 15" 1/2 inches from grease fitting to grease fitting per side as a rough starting point with the box centered, mine were more like 17" and 14".

I would start with what you replaced and find the problem part unless you had this problem before.

Here is a pic of what my friends box looks like centered below: