L200 steering box faults



Mitsubishi L200 Steering Box

 

The Mitsubishi L200 pick up steering box is one of the most popular requests we receive, UK spec Mitsubishi L200 pick-ups from 1999-2007 with 4-wheel drive and crew cab are designated as the k74 model, this comes from the numbers in the vehicle chassis number or VIN number, there is some confusion with other suppliers who list two different shaft sizes for the l200 steering box, unfortunately the listings they use are out of date as all l200 k74 4x4 steering boxes us the larger 35mm shaft. Only a few 2-wheel drive boxes that are around use the smaller 32mm shaft.

 The main failure of L200 steering boxes is due to leakage from the lower seal. We are often asked if just putting a new lower seal in the L200 steering box will cure this leak, unfortunately the answer is that simply replacing the seal will not cure the leak.

The first thing to establish is that the seal the can be seen from the outside at the bottom of the steering box is not the hydraulic seal it is merely a dust cap to keep dirt and debris out of the steering box. The hydraulic seal is further up inside the box which requires the box to be stripped in order to change this. More importantly, there is an underlying reason why the lower seals leak and it is because the main shaft on which the seals run suffers from corrosion. The shaft becomes pitted which then leads to seal failure, in order to rebuild the L200 steering box successfully and guarantee that the leak will not reoccur requires that the shaft be ground down and the hard chromed before being ground back to the original size.

Only by doing this can we guarantee that our remanufactured L200 steering boxes will have a long service life, this together with new bearings bushes and seals throughout out the entire steering box mean that you can be sure that our L200 steering boxes are of the highest possible quality.

When we supply out exchange L200 steering boxes we prefer to sell the steering box complete with a new drop arm or Pittman arm fitted to the box. This is because the old arms that would otherwise need to be removed and swapped over onto the new box can be notoriously difficult to remove, they are fitted onto a tapered spline which over time corrodes causing the arm to seize to the shaft. The only way to safely remove the arm is with a proprietary drop arm puller. Any use or force e.g. hammering the shaft or arm will risk damaging either the shaft or the internals of the steering box. We require all of our steering boxes back on exchange and those boxes must be undamaged in this way, if a box is returned with damage caused by force from removing an old drop arm we, unfortunately, have no option other than to charge the customer a surcharge. 

Take a look at the different steering boxes that we can offer.

https://shop.westernpowersteering.co.uk/category-56.html