Problem

Stiff spinning steering modules and hard shifting between gears(Quick little story - while bringing this beast into its location by myself, I fell and got pinned under it for a few minutes.  It is amazing how much having your chest compressed affects your ability to call out for help!)

OK - onto the next issue…  Its steering wheels were pretty stiff, and if you tried to give them a good hard spin they would come to a halt within a couple of turns.  Removing and disassembling them was easy.  Turns out the problem was that the old grease in them had coagulated/thickened so that it was less viscous and more sticky than cold honey! 

Getting the grease out of the barrel and off the shaft and sleeves literally took ~10 minutes (for each module) with some rubbing alcohol, elbow grease and rags.  After getting that old gunk out, a quick application of some light lithium grease on everything solves that problem - the wheels will now spin for at least 10 turns easily.

For the shifter modules, I just applied some powered graphite to the shifter “ball” at the opening of the shifter and after a few shifts to get it all around; the shifts are much easier now.

Solution

Notes

One of the steering modules has a broken shaft/cone, which caused the wheel to be off-center, and it was being held in place strictly by the force of the retaining bolt that goes through the entire assembly.  I managed to get it a bit straighter than it was before, but it still is broken internally. 

Not sure if I want to go through sanding down the two halves to try to get them melded or epoxied together - I am afraid of shortening the cone too much and causing problems.  The wheel works and the game is playable, so I might just leave it as it is.