1987 560 SL steering gear

[Wanderer]

Car was towed to my shop with the steering gear taken apart. Trouble is they took all the balls out I've rebuilt these before without any trouble, though I have never taken out the balls. I'm hoping someone can guide me to the procedure to properly refit the balls. Been searching for a few hours and haven't found what I was looking for, so I joined and asked. I'll keep searching as I know I am not the first to run into this "issue" Any and all help is appreciated.

[CWW]

Sounds like a PITA.

It would almost have to be cheaper and easier at this point just to shell out the $300 for a remanufactured unit and eat the $150 core charge, than to try and salvage that POS that has parts missing, and where you're going to have to repack all the balls.

www.mercedessteering.com are great folks, I've ordered reman units from them before, and they're as good as new. They might even agree to take your busted up unit as a core exchange, or give you at least partial credit for it, even with the missing parts.

Never hurts to ask.

[Wanderer]

I got it figured out. Once i understood how the ball circuit worked, it took me less than 5 minutes to get it all put back together and working fine