steering box adjustment

82 500 SL with play in steering. The adjustment is complete, and it made a huge difference in handling. I could tell the problem was in the box because I had already renewed the idler arm bushing, ball joints, steering shock and tie rods and there was still too much play -- maybe 2-3 inches in the steering wheel. I had the front end supported on stands. When I grabbed the front wheels at 9 and 3 o'clock and shook back and forth, I could see a 1 to 1 movement in the pitman arm. thus the play was in the box, as the rest of the system was tight. Here is what I did to make the adjustment:

1. remove air cleaner
2. disconnect a/c hose running above left exhaust manifold and set aside (my a/c is not working; be careful with this if yours works. It could open up your system)
3. unfasten the 2 10mm nuts holding the EGR valve onto exhaust man. and lift the whole thing up a half inch
4. now you have clearance to remove the left exhaust heat shield
5. remove left side plug wires
6. due to very tight clearance, i had to jack up the engine about an inch. to do this I removed the 10mm socket head bolts from underneath the motor mounts, removed the 2 10mm fasteners at the top of the fan shroud, and jacked up the engine from the pan using a large block of wood to distribute the weight
7. after several, yes several days of soaking the adjusting screw with PB Blaster, it finally came loose. first, use a 19mm socket with a wobble extension to loosen the surrounding nut. then switch to a crowfoot 19mm to hold it in place while turning the adjusting screw out with a 6mm allen wrench. to do this, I used a 1/4" ratchet with extension and a 6mm wobble female hex socket on the end. I then cut off about a half inch of 6mm allen wrench to put into the socket and into the adjusting screw.
8. i adjusted the screw CCW a quarter-inch at a time and then checked whether I was binding or not. The correct adjustment was a full turn in this case.
9. put everything back together in reverse order.

My steering is now factory-spec 1" play. Between this adjustment and renewing the driveshaft center bearing / carrier, the car is more fun to drive.

Rich Mayer
82 500 SL