Hey guys, it's been a long time since I posted here. I thought I'd share my experience with replacing a buddies steering box on his 91 RS. I had searched on here for replacement info, but there wasn't much (I did find the part number for the seal kit though). It must be pretty rare for the box/seal to fail.

His pitman arm shaft seal started leaking power steering fluid pretty bad, so I ordered the shaft seal kit #MB636914 from the dealer to fix it for him. Well, the pitman arm lock nut would not come off. Even 5 foot of extension pipe could not budge the frozen nut (and two old school breaker bars are now broken). We could see the first thread going up into the nut so we knew it was not a reverse thread nut, but it was not moving. So we opted to replace the whole box with a bone yard unit. I'm happy to report that a 1997 box will fit and function as a perfect replacement, pitman arm and all (and had a heck of a lot less gear box play in it to boot!). The junk yard charged us $25 for the box and the seal kit cost $36...DOH! I hope I can return the seal kit.

Also, when we put the engine in about 1.5 years ago, he had accidentally unbolted one of the AC lines off the compressor. He tightend it back before all of the freon leaked out, but it was plenty low to keep the compressor from cycling. We just recently evacuated and recharged the system using Freeze-12 and it's blowing super cold and nice right now (and no, i don't work for the above website, there's tons of places selling it now, but check it out as a cool alternative to R134a without having to swap out the R12 hoses for barrier hoses compatible for R134a).

x2 on the Freeze 12. I have been running it for the last 3 years. Works great. One Napa wont sell it to me, they say you need a license. The one across town will sell it to me.

Will the freeze 12 work with a system that has had the connectors changed to accept 134a? I miss the Raiders ice cold AC. The 134a in it right now blows mildly cool at best. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Yep, The Freeze-12 cans use standard can adapter threads, so you could screw on an R134a can adapter. My buddies had an r134a adapter on the low side, and regular r-12 on the high side. I borrowed an r134a gauge set and vacuum pump to do the refill. The kit came with an r-12 can adapter though and since I wasn't hooking up the high side line, I connected the can adapter to the high side gauge and sealed the center line to do the charging. Worked great.