GM Steering in a T-Cab Stude truck

Dean McHenry - SDC Forum # 47769


The gear box is from a 1993 Caddy Sedan , I think this basic setup is used on most all of GM's full sized RWD cars...This one is 3 turns lock to lock But I have seen some that are 3.5 and I suppose there are others too. The adaptor is basicly a "T" shaped piece of steel. I used a nice heavy chunk of I beam that I had .The flange is 3/8 th and the web part is 5/16 I used the original Stude mount as a pattern and used the original bolt holes. Make sure your frame is not cracked or bodged up in this area,your mount needs to fit the frame rail flat and TIGHT. I held the box as low and as far forward as I could in order to clear the shock mount. I used a GM style tilt steering column , but wanted to keep the column looking original so I could use my original sreering wheel so I went to a bunch of fiddleling around with the lathe and wiped all the welded on bits and pieces off the column as well as turning out the original stude upper bearing support to fit so the thing looked original... DONT DO THIS! What a bunch of mucking about.....Just open up your handy Speedway cataloge and order a decent steering setup and be done with it..As for the Pitman arm mine is an International PU part, that I scrounged but I see plenty of them in various lengths in the Speedway cataloge as well so dont waste too much time wandering the junk yards for this. The Drag links are all stuff the local NAPA store came up with for me. I gave them the Old (Worn out) Stude stuff and they used the buyers guide to come up with a tie rod that fit the IH Pitman as well as a jount to fit the taper of the Studies idler arm. The threaded coupler was available in several different lengths so no worries there..I did the same thing on the lower reach rod to the axle,..I had to install a couple of spacers on the shock mount in order to clear my pitman arm set up,but you might not have to do that if you are a little more careful than I was. The gear box could move inboard a bit and solve this problem..