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When I got my '39 Six, the steering was unusable. The open-face thrust bearings that stabilize the sector wheel in the steering box had disintegrated and there was at least a half a steering wheel revolution of play. I had to remove the steering box and had a local machinist make some bushings as the open face ball bearings are no longer available. This improved the steering, but there is still about 6" of play at the wheel. I have been told it is important to line up the 'high spot' of the steering shaft worm gear with the center position of the steering wheel or there will be excessive play no matter how exact the steering box bearing tolerances are. My question is: How do 'find' the 'high spot'??? I can't see any markings on the worm gear. Does anyone know the correct procedure to line up the sector wheel? When I put it back in, I tried to have the wheels straight and have the worm gear engaging the sector wheel as close to the half way mark as I could, but in rethinking this, it would be so easy to have the worm gear off by a quarter turn or so, either way and 'miss' the 'high spot'. I talked to a steering box rebuilder and he said even if a rebuilt steering box is reinstalled with the worm gear misaligned, there will be play. Any advice or help here would be hugely appreciated.

Here is the procedure as given in the 51-4 manual. The 38-9 manual doesn't go into the description of turning between end stops and then going back to exactly 1/2 the amount of turns it took to go full but you were on the right track. I would think it should work the same way for 39 even though the steering boxes are different. The amount of measured force needed to pull the 39 wheel thru the high spot is much higher than the amount given for the later models so you would need to use those earlier numbers if you want to go exactly by the book.

If you don't have a scale, Amazon has spring scales or balances as they are sometimes called. You could also use an electronic hanging or hand held fish scale in place of the spring scale mentioned in the procedure. A local store should carry those as again does Amazon. They can be bought for around $10-15 in the range needed with an accuracy of grams or ounces which is probably better than the scales Packard used.

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