Reliant must have been one of the very last manufacturers to use a steering box on their passenger cars, sticking with it on the revived Robin until production ended in 2001 – or 2002 if you count the final cars built under license by B&N Plastics. That shouldn’t come as a surprise though because when you think about it, they would have been hard pressed to make rack-and-pinion steering work with a single front wheel!
The Burman worm-and-peg steering box from my car looked sound and the casing was undamaged, which was a good start because a broken alloy casting would have multiplied my problems many times over. I could move the drop arm by hand too through a complete arc of movement, which was a bonus. Unfortunately, it felt very rough and graunchy the whole way.
Steering boxes are one of those things like gearboxes and differentials whose overhaul I would rather leave to a professional, the only problem in this case being that none of the specialists I contacted were interested. I really don’t know why, but you often find when you are dealing with unfashionable cars (I used to have the same problems with Skodas many years ago) that it is hard to get specialists to take them seriously.
So in the end, I had no option but to give it a go myself. My biggest concern was that even if I took it apart, I’d
