Good morning everyone,
I conducted a search on this, but didn't come up with anything. I'm in the middle of a power steering conversion on my '82 swb 4wd, and thought I finally had everything I needed. I bought my parts from a seller on Craigslist, and they looked to match up with the parts on my daily driven '83 SR5 4wd. I went to bolt on the gear box and bracket, and found the bracket holes do not line up with the holes on the frame. I compared the bracket on the power box to the one from my manual box, and saw the difference. The top part of the bracket (the part that bolts to the top of the frame rail) does not reach the top holes in the frame. It looks like the holes are all spaced correctly. I don't know anything about the donor vehicle my power gear box came off of, but the only thing I could think of was that it came off a 2wd.

Anyone have any thoughts or similar experience? The gear box looks just like the one on my '83, and the bracket and box look to be original and not pieced together (the box, bracket and pitman arm were all assembled when I bought them, and have the same patina). If anyone has the right bracket, I'm a buyer even if I have to buy more than the bracket. I'm in Northern California.
Thanks,
Marc

 

I recently installed power steering on my 81, and I remember some of the holes barely-sorta-not-quite lining up. Toyota really should've made them slotted, but I ended up making it work with a hammer and elbow grease.

I don't think you need that bracket, actually. The only difference I can see is that it has stops for the pitman arm, but they're spaced wider than the stops on the knuckles would allow anyway. The PS steerbox should bolt to the Armstrong bracket and work just fine.

 

I like really where you're going with that moroza, and I have no reason to doubt what you said is true. However, my OCD might make that a tough one for me to take! I'd really like to know what the difference is between the brackets is. Would there be a difference between an '82 frame and say an '84 or '85 frame in this area?

Moroza, just to confirm you were able to use the bracket with the stops? It doesn't appear to me that OD be able to use any sort persuasion to get the holes lined up enough to work. I thought about slotting the top holes too, but that kinda freaked me out a bit since we are talking about a steering component.
Thanks!
Marc

 

No, I ended up bolting on the PS-spec bracket with the stops. Nothing had to be modified, but it didn't go on nicely at all. I don't know why exactly, but I highly doubt there's any systematic difference between the PS-equipped frames and manual-steering frames. Then again... can you snap a pic of what you're dealing with?

I'm half an hour west of Santa Rosa. If you're local I could check it out in person.

 

Hey moroza, thanks you so much for your generous offer to take a look at my situation in person, but I'm just south of Stockton so I'm a fair drive from you. You can see the difference in the two brackets. I might be able to slot the two upper holes out and still have material on all sides, but it's close to a 1/4" difference.

 

Huh! Mine were definitely not that far off.

If you slot the one on the left, there's not a whole lot of material remaining, and that would spook me with a steering bracket. I recommend you use the one on the right and just ignore the travel stops. For what it's worth, mine has the stops and doesn't touch them at full lock either direction. I'm not sure why they're there.

 

Moroza, got it squared away man. I happened to check pick-n-pull and saw they had an '83 pickup, on the off chance it was a 4wd. Got there and sure enough it was a 4wd. The front axle and all the steering gear were missing...except for the bracket. Got home and it fit perfectly. When I was comparing the two mounts I actually saw "84" on the one that didn't fit, and "83" on the one I grabbed today. Going to guess the first one I tried was off an '84, but who knows. Thanks for the replies moroza!
Marc

 

So just to be clear, we've learned (presumably)... that between 83 and 84, Toyota changed the steerbox mounting brackets slightly, even though most of the steering hardware is the same?

Nice score at the junkyard. They're usually picked clean and quick before long. That one doesn't have a black interior by any chance?

 

It doesn't have any interior. It's pretty much ready for the crusher. It does have what I thought to be a pretty nice flatbed on it though. If I was going that way with my '82 and I could get it cheap enough, it might be worth the effort. It's at the Modesto pick-n-pull if anyone is interested.