Hi.

I have a steering box that came with my car that was in bit's and I'm not sure if it's correct or not and wondered if you guys may know?

The numbers on the box are as follows and nothing makes much sense to me right now.

The first code is on a little tab which appears to have two screw heads either side and reads 167.

Then near that is a code 5679142 with the number 11 above it.

Then on the steering box bolted cover plate is the code 171 6723 68

And finally there is a small stamping plate with the code B1838.

Does anyone have any idea what these numbers refer to and if so what do they mean as it would be much appreciated.

BTW the box seems to be 6 turns lock to lock off the car.

Any help would be great in this new mystery...thanks..

You didn't mention it but I have to assume that you have a manual steering gear in your Z28. There was only one manual gear available in the Camaro. It was a 24:1 ratio. The overall steering ratio could be made faster with shorter steering arms and lengthened pitman and idler arms. (David Pozzi is more of an expert than I am on the linkage and steering arm issues.)

I believer that the Camaro had steering stops in the knuckles and not the gear. If you had a full travel manual gear you would have the following:
86 degrees of pitman shaft sweep X 24:1 ratio = 2,064 degrees of input shaft rotation.
2,064/360 degrees per revolution = 5.7 rotations in the input shaft (roughly what you measured.)

So the good news is that for the most part you have a production Camaro manual steering gear. The bad news is that the numbers and letters on the gear mean almost nothing in terms of identifying exactly what gear that you have.

The metal tag with B1838 means that the gear was probably built on the second shift on day 183 of 1968. (Day 183 would be around July 1.)
JIML82

Measure the center to center distance of the pitman arm. N44 manual was 5.75".

Actually the pitman arm on your Z should be longer than standard. I have the same box as you etc. I had trouble identifying some of my steering parts until I came upon a website that is no longer available, that told about certain dates at the end of 68 production that used leftover 67 parts on the steering. Mine is one of those and has 67 steering parts on it. About 3/4 the way down on tidbit from this site. http://www.pozziracing.com/camaro_steering.htm

The first code is on a little tab which appears to have two screw heads either side and reads 167.

Steering box was cast on the 167th day of 1968 (Sunday June 16).

Then near that is a code 5679142 ...

That's the correct box for your manual steering application.

And finally there is a small stamping plate with the code B1838.

The whole assembly came together on the 183rd day, which is Tuesday July 2.