So, parking the oil hose for a while, it's back to the steering box alignment..
Of course, some of the problems I'm coming across will not occur with Left Hand Drive models, and vice versa..
First things first, remove steering box, strip it down and inspect. The idea being not to make it perfect, but if it was serviceable then I'd use it and, if not, I'd replace it. It was incredibly greasy/oily on the outside, with leaks coming from most areas. It was also very stiff to turn around the centre mark but easy at either end.
So, a few pics before and after..
As you can see, a bit gooey. In amongst all that (at least 20 years old) decayed grease was one of the two plastic plugs - the old one had obviously perished when a PO was trying to pull it out of the top, so they had just pushed the rest in and stuck a new plug in the hole..
A good clean up and everything seemed to be pretty tight, with no real play in any area.
I reassembled all parts without grease and adjusted it to see how much play (or lack of) was in the system. Actually, it was all pretty good. So I reassembled with lithium grease, tightened everything down and adjusted again. We'll see in time whether the old seals will hold or whether I will need to get new ones.
Now for the real problem. As some of you saw in an earlier post, the box is out of alignment with the steering column. To fix this, as @Alan Merklin said, I would need to chisel off the two locating lugs on the front beam then slide the box further to the right side of the car (to the left in the pics). Problem - if I go any further to the outside of the car then the steering stop arm hits the beam upright. The pictures below show the standard location of the steering box - which gives about 5mm clearance. It looks like I will have to grind that down so I can move the box further to the outside of the car. I don't really want to remove it completely, otherwise there's no limit to 'full lock' which usually means something rubs something else and trouble ensues (ooh, matron!).
