holeshot9g

I have an 87 cherokee with 249k on it. The steering is easy but there was a tiny bit of movement in the pitman arm shaft which made it wander and no way to take out the slack in the steering. It's just plain worn out. I was able to get a power steering box complete with a pump and lines from a 97 grand cherokee w/v-8, for FREE. I had asked on here a while back if it would interchange and the answer I got was "no". Part numbers for the two vehicles are different if ya look em up on napa website. Being the hard-headed bastard that I am, I tried it anyways. The steering box itself has physically the same dimentions. The u-joint shaft splines are the same at the steering box but are different at the steering column. The pitman arm is the same, and the hose fittings are the same. It bolted right up. The lines are different obviously, since one was a 6 cyl and the "new" one came off a v-8. The pump is the same dimensions but the one on my 6 cyl has a bracket bolted on and the one off the v-8 does not. It will still swap right out, just bolt on the bracket. The v-8 p/s pump pulley is 1/2 inch bigger but there is probably enough adjustment in the belt to compensate. I didn't use the pump since mine is working just fine with no noise or leaks. Anyways, swapped out the steering box and now it drives like a million bucks! No more wandering or varying freeplay in the steering. The steering effort does seem to be noticeably stiffer but I read somewhere on here that a 95 has stiffer steering than the 87 which is really easy, so I'm guessing that applies to the 97 models as well. All in all it swapped right out with no mods whatsoever and it seems to be working just fine.