Power Steering Rebuild - notes and vents

The shop manual details the rebuild. Take photos of the order and orientation of each part like I did above. The manual is overly-fussy about measuring the pre-load on the worm gear, showing a weight arm to measure torque. By the time you stake the nut, it will change. I just used "about right" feel. The main trick is to keep all the plates tight as you install them, so none pop out of position. You hold the input shaft turned tight ccw, as I recall. That was probably my mistake long ago in rebuilding my 69 Dart's box.

"Rebuild" is probably an overly optimistic term. Besides replacing seals and cleaning any gunk, you are mainly tightening the adjustments to take care of wear in the re-circulating balls. The output "sector shaft" adjustment can be done from the outside (box installed). Don't over-adjust that or the box will wear greatly. Don't worry that your input shaft still feels like it has play (engine off). It is supposed to have a mechanical "dead zone", where the input plates are active and off their stops. With hydraulic pressure up, the piston follows the input shaft, with every slight change. It would only hit the "stops" if you lose hydraulics, in which case you force the steering mechanically (and would have play), but that is an emergency scenario.