What is their current lube recommendation for a manual steering box? The car is a 65 Valiant. Searching the site resulted in all kinds of weird and wonderful cocktails.

Mopar Action had a nice article about 20 yrs ago. You can add gear lube to top it off, but the factory loaded it with heavy gray grease, like bearing grease (probably with lithium in it). Mopar Action put something like multipurpose Mopar bearing/knuckle grease into a coffee can and heated it on a hotplate until it flowed, then poured it into the box filler opening with a funnel. This is what I plan to do on the one I am rebuilding myself. The new ones from P-S-T and Lares appear to be full of bearing grease. Long ago, I topped mine off (when leaking or apparently not full) with gear lube and had not trouble, except that sometime it would leak out the sector shaft seal. I doubt I can find my Mopar Action article but maybe someone can find it or a web search might?

Lou

Wasn't there a post about using John Deere tractor grease in the steering box? I bought some based in the post but I can't seem to lay my hands on it at the moment.

Following the FSM procedure is not hard to do the worm and sector shaft adjustments, from my recollection, especially on the bench. I build/cobbled some easy tool to rotate the big plate on the top of the box for worm adjustment. Need some bolts going through a metal plate where the bolts fit into the holes in the big plate. You do not need to apply much torque. Then a big channel locks pliers to torque down the big nut while holding down the big plate. I would just put gear lube in or parts store multipurpose grease if it is an old used box. Probably doesn't matter much unless you are breaking in new gears.

Lou

I sure would like to do it properly, now that I have the chance, but... I can perhaps manage the physical part of loosening the lock etc, but how on earth am I going to get the adjustment correct or any better than it is? The FSM says the torque should be between 1,5 and 4,5 inch-pounds. No tool I can find goes that low. So do you do it just "by feel", or am I missing something here?

Maurice