We offer an exchange and rebuild service for old and tired steering boxes.

The steering box that was used on the Land Rover Series 1 80″ was a design by Burman Douglas, who produced steering boxes for various car manufacturers in the 1950’s.

These boxes were put trough a lot of stress during the service life of the early Land Rovers and some flaws in the design mean that most of them need to be refurbished after 75 years of service.

Although we can offer a rebuild service for all steering boxes of the various models on the Land Rover, we describe here the details for the aluminium version that was used on the 80″ in the early 1950’s. Do you have any other model of box that needs reconditioning, get in touch so we can offer you the best advice on how to proceed and on pricing.

Steering box overhaul

The Burman Douglas steering boxes show several flaws after years of service.
Excessive play on the steering wheel, resulting in a really vague behaviour, wear on the rocker arm bushes and cracking of the aluminium collar of the casing are the most common problems that we encounter. Combined with poor or non-existent lubrication of the box, this accelerates the wear of the components.

After a good amount of engineering and testing and cooperation between our in team in Belgium and our specialist colleague in the UK, we can now finally offer an excellent overhauled steering box which will last for many years and has all the known issues eliminated.

Overhaul procedure

After reception of your old steering box, this is carefully examined and measured. It is completely dismantles, cleaned and all parts are sandblasted to give a clean start.

Most of the aluminium steering boxes have small cracks on the collar, where the steel tube is inserted in the alundum casing. Although they may not be very obvious at first, they will only get bigger during the life of the box and because of the forces applied to this area.

We will remove the existing aluminium collar by machining it away and replace it with a specially machined steel piece that is screwed in the aluminium casing. This new steel collar is then also secured with an invisible locking bolt, at the rear end of the steering box.
This eliminates the risk of the cracks and due to the solidity of this solution, it offers a safe way to refurbish the box. The new collar is then riveted in place and the repair is virtually invisible.

New nut, bushes and seals

To solve the issue of the excessive play on the steering wheel, the old nut is discarded. The original steering tube (worm) is examined and measured and a new bronze nut is machined to suit the exact thread of this tube.
The new nut will have a longer threaded part, giving it more strength than the old steel nut, where the thread is not running all the way.
By matching a new nut to the existing steering tube or worm, the play is eliminated as much as possible in this design.

In case the aluminium steering box has wear on the inside of the casing, this can be honed as went and the bronze nut will be made up for this exact size.

To complete the overhaul, new bronze bushes are machined, and pressed in the casing and these will be reamed in-line for a perfect fit. The small bearing balls at the top of the steering box are replaced with new ones and will be installed properly greased. A new oil seal is inserted for the rocker arm and the complete box is then assembled and tested to be within the original specs.

All steering boxes will be delivered with complete new seals and are finished in a professional 2K high gloss paint.

Steps