Today sucked. The steering went together great and I stood back looking at all of my hard work and felt proud. Then I turned the steering wheel and realized that the tires were turning the wrong direction! I would turn the steering wheel to the left and the wheels would go to the right. Not good.
So, three trips to the auto parts store and two incorrect replacement gearboxes later, I finally found a winner. The gearbox I needed came factory on some Ford vehicles that rotate the "wrong" way, but due to economics (I'm sure), they also came factory on some GM vehicles like a 1985 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck and turned the "right" way. They are identical except for the rotation of the shafts relative to each other. All of this has to do with the position that the gearboxes were originally mounted from the factory relative to the pitman arm, steering linkage, and wheel hubs. It gets technical pretty quick, so get ready to go down the rabbit hole if you search for any of this stuff on the internet.
To top it off, the super cool new aluminum radiator for the truck arrived today. Too bad the box was all crushed, opened, and generally disheveled. The radiator inside was damaged. I was too disgusted to take a picture of it. The replacement will be here early next week and I'll have to make another trip into town to drop this thing off since they are going to use a different carrier to deliver the new one.
I spent 12 hours today hustling around town, reading internet threads on steering swaps, and talking to "experts" on the phone only to get right back to where I started at the beginning of the day... No assembled steering and no radiator. The drink below may or may not contain a significant amount of spiced rum.
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