John Mathews from Auburn car repair and Offroad asked me to review the "ultimate steering box brace" for a ZJ. I reached out to my buddy Gary who does the NWjeepcast.com pod cast and in his mechanhack shack we installed a brand new steering box and the ultimate steering box brace. The design of the steering box brace and quality of materials used is excellent. The unibody on a ZJ has a slight S curve in the front and the brace has the perfect bends in it to match up precisely to the unibody where it bolts on. After we swapped out my steering box and new drag link ends we installed the brace. First we unbolted my anti-rock swaybar then replaced the retaining nut on the selector shaft with a stud. This stud is what does all the work for the brace to support the steering box. Once you have the stud tightened to 180 foot pounds or in our case good and tight you can install the brace. The directions called for a new radiator hose that is longer but we were able to install the brace using the stock 5.2 lower radiator hose. The brace is mounted to both sides of the unibody with 4 grade 8 bolts. The unibody already has 4 nuts built in on each side that the brace matches up to perfectly. To make installation a breeze I recommend chasing the nuts with a tap if they are packed with dirt and
rust like mine were. After loosely tightening the 8 bolts holding the brace we were able to slip the stock 5.2 radiator hose back into place with very little interference to the flow of the hose. Now the bearing block slips over the stud and is bolted to the brace. The bearing block is very sturdy and even has a cap for the zerk fitting to keep it clean for applying grease. Both the brace and the bearing block have some adjustment built into them so before tightening everything down we needed to center the stud on the brace and tighten all the bolts down. The brace dropped the mounting location for the sway bar by 2.5 inches which when using an anti rock is perfect because now I was able to get rid of my sway bar spacers that you have to use to clear the radiator hose with an anti rock. Overall the brace looks to be built to take abuse. I am confident that this is going to keep me from breaking my steering box off the frame again. The brace helps transfer the energy off the selector shaft and steering box and into the frame rails instead. I will do a follow up down the road after I can get some good trail miles on it. If you want to hear us talk about the install more listen to nwjeepcast.com episode 125.
