Old worn and vague steering can take the fun out of your classic Chevy. We show you how to easily give your ride’s steering a modern feel.
Good steering is vital when it comes to enjoying our classic hot rods. After all, the two ways we interact with our cars are through the throttle and steering wheel. Poor performance in either of those will really be a buzzkill when it comes to taking our rides on the highway or track. What your worn system needs is a classic Chevy steering upgrade.
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Even when our classics were new, the steering wasn’t all that great, but back then, people didn’t know any better, so “it was what it was.” Well, today we’ve been conditioned by our modern cars to expect a certain responsiveness from our car’s steering. Add in 50-plus years of wear and tear, and it’s no wonder our stock classics’ steering feels vague as it wanders left and right on the highway. To help fix this, we’re replacing the steering in a 1969 Nova, but it would be exactly the same in a Camaro, Firebird, or several early Chevys, because many of them use the exact same steering box design.
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In addition to replacing the worn steering column (and adding tilt), we will be swapping in a new Borgeson close-ratio steering box to replace the sloppy, wide-ratio stocker.
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With the old column out of the car, you can better compare it to the new Ididit column on the left. Aside from being better looking, it doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of miles on it and, as a bonus, it will give our Nova the tilt option.
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Our column has an integrated ignition key; if yours doesn’t, then the good news is the column will be a lot less expensive, and the installation, while similar, will be a bit simpler because you won’t have the ignition wiring to mess with. ididit also provides you with the code if you want to have additional keys cut.
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We started by moving the dash mount from the stock column to the new ididit piece.
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These are the stock parts that close up the firewall around where the column passes through. If you’re going to reuse these, you’re going to want to clean them up and give them a fresh coat of paint.
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Or you can be fancy and use an aftermarket aluminum plate like this. It looks better, seals better, and has a “ball” that pivots to match the angle of the steering column. Unlike the stocker, though, it has to be installed before the column is slid into place.
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With that, we were ready to put our new column in place. Because we are replacing the steering box, we left it out of the way for now.
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To remove the stock Saginaw steering box, we first removed the power steering lines and then used a Pitman Arm Puller (from Harbor Freight PN: 2708) to remove the stock Pitman arm. This also a good time to inspect the rest of your steering parts for wear and replace any that are questionable.
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Because the old column was already unbolted from the box, the last step was to remove the bolts holding the box to the frame.
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With that done, the stock box and rag joint could be lifted out of the car (or dropped out if you are working from below).
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Our new Borgeson Street and Performance Series box (PN: 800130) will give our Nova a modern, quick-ratio feel. This 12.7:1 ratio box will replace the Saginaw/Delphi 800 series boxes found in most 1995 and up GM cars.
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Pre-1977 cars like our Nova require a new Borgeson rag joint (PN: 990012), and really, you should always replace an older rag joint when doing a new steering box. The new ones are not only made better, but the old ones are likely sloppy from years of use.
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Best of all, the Borgeson box is a direct replacement in terms of how it bolts in. If you are moving up from manual steering, you will need a power steering pitman arm. The box uses either O-ring or flare-style hose connections and has a 3/4-inch 30-spline shaft. It is a tiny bit larger in the area of the four-bolt cover, so on some installs (big-blocks), you might have to do some “adjustments” to either the header pipes or the box itself. In our case, we had plenty of room.
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And here you can see the box fully installed and mated to the ididit column by way of the Borgeson rag joint. We had already upgraded our Nova’s power steering pump and hoses (Earls), but if you haven’t, this would be a good time to do so. At the very least, you should clean out your power steering pump and replace the fluid to avoid pumping contaminants through your new box.
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To finish the install, we bolted on a new billet and leather steering wheel (and billet adaptor hub) from Eddie Motorsports and took our Nova out for a non-literal spin around the neighborhood. As expected, the steering felt much better, and all the slop and vagueness from before were but memories. We imagine the quicker ratio will be a nice upgrade when we hit the next autocross.
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