Has anyone here rebuilt a steering box?

fordmach70 said:

I recently rebuild 2 mustang steering boxes a 19 to 1 box and a 16 to 1 box. A couple things you should look out for are… 1. There are2 “u” shaped metal tubes that the recirculating balls run through that I found to be eroded on both boxes. They have an odd shape so you have to look at them closely. 2. The bearing preload on the input shaft is to be set at somewhere around 6-8 inch pounds. This can be difficult to accurately adjust. I have a snap-on brand dial gauge for setting up pinion gears but found it just wasn’t sensitive enough. Frankly I kind of winged it and hope it doesn’t bite me in the ---. I guess really the main thing I would recommend is follow a good ford service Manuel and not a Haynes or Chilton book. One more thing ford does have a procedure for checking the rotational torque on the input shaft by using a gauge at the steering wheel. Saginaw the manufacturer of the box says this is a very bad practice as it doesn’t isolate the box from the friction created by the Colum bearing and will give you erroneous readings.

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pushrod power said:

I had mine rebuilt by Lee Engineering from standard ratio to 12:1. I was very happy with it and it was very streetable.

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