Jeep Ross to Hudson Ross to Saginaw

Sometime in the '60s my grandfather had converted the CJ5 over to Hudson Ross type steering. It was basically the same as the Jeep Ross box, but the gear box was much larger and had a different gear ratio for the heavier Hudson car. He basically swapped the column, gear box and steering wheel from a Hudson into the Jeep. From what I gather, this was a fairly common upgrade back in the day. Now I am swapping it over to a manual Saginaw box. I wanted to keep the Hudson column though. The steering wheel was shot so I replaced it with a Grant brand wheel. Grant has a lot of adapters, but I didn't see one for Hudsons. This meant that I had to make my own. I cut the spokes off of the wheel and pulled the metal center hub out of the plastic of the wheel. Then I turned it down on a lathe, made an adapter plate and welded it on to the old hub. This allowed me to bolt on the Grant wheel. I cut the gear box off of the shaft and cut the column tube down as well. I turned a plug down on the lathe and welded it into the end of the hollow shaft to help re-enforce it. Next I lathed out a couple of bushings since the gearbox was no longer able to support the end of the shaft in the tube. The column mount gear shift indicator got cut off the column and ground smooth. The turn signal mechanism got cleaned up and fixed. Everything got sanded, de-rusted and painted. Now I just need to put a U-joint to the end of the shaft. I think it turned out looking pretty classy and I got self canceling turn siganls.

The old Hudson column and wheel.


The Hudson steering column on the large Ross box and the column tube.


The center of the steering wheel with the spokes cut off and the plastic removed.


The finished column.

 

Snazzee, looks very good. Effort rewarded.