Steering box repair

Paul, you could be the answer to a prayer.

As you know in addition to their more ordinary components Gemmer steering gears use an hourglass-shaped worm. The tooling to make these is long gone, although there are some firms in Argentina that make them if one orders in quantity.

A machinist in Maine named Dick Pratt has been re-manufacturing Gemmer steering gear for Franklins for some years now using some imported components made to his specs. Perhaps you might contact him and maybe between the two of you we Cord owners could obtain remanufactured steering boxes. Seems like there would be a market. Contact info on request.

Even the most driven Cords put a fraction of the average "driver" auto's mileage on them. A new steering box could help put many of them back on the road for a long, long time.

In addition to having a couple of Cords myself, I also own a company that specializes in remanufacturing steering gear boxes. We have done several for Cords. I have not seen a race that was machined wrong, but it is possible that a race was worn over time to a sharp edge. And I have seen the ball bearings in the condition you discribe. I am 99% sure that yours is rebuildable, but you would need to send it to me. I can be even more sure if you e-mail pictures to me at <a href="mailto:[email protected]][email protected][/url]. You can also check out our web site at www.larescorp.com .

I would like to ask the forum members if they know a source for steering box parts/repair/overhaul for Cord/Gemmer steering boxes:
on one of the axial ball bearings on the roller that follows the worm, half (7 or 8 ) of the balls are out and split in half! (this caused a play in the steering of about 1/3 of a turn, which was quite scary as it happened during the drive on winding roads). I had to find out that the outer bearing race has a very sharp corner (not properly deburred?) which cuts in to the balls [one ball which is still in, shows very distinct "cutting traces"]. I think that on the tour last weekend the last ball (or two) which still got an even load distribution on the race up to that time, split.

BTW: is this a known problem? Are there any "larger" outer races which cannot "cut" so easily in the balls (or why have the outer races not a slightly bigger diameter so they do not just make a "critical" contact on center line of the balls? Any hints/help etc are very much appreciated. Thank you, Mario