58 Ford Ranchero manual steering box pitman arm

Pamlico

Pamlico

Member
Well, the manual steering box just gave up on my Ranchero. It was the roller bearings on the long shaft. Luckily, and I truly mean luckily, it gave out right in front of my garage upon returning from a cruise-in. It had been acting up and had a lot of play for a while and I had adjusted the pitman shaft all I could. In anticipation of this impending failure, I found a used 58 steering box at Carlisle in June. Fast forward to today and I am in the throws of making the swap. I noticed the pitman arm on the replacement box is about a half inch longer than the original one. I could easily use my old one but I am wondering, while I'm there, is there an advantage to using the slightly longer one? Better ratio(or not). And would that require a front end alignment, etc? Thanks!
 
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KULTULZ, I was hoping you would chime in. I agree, that would certainly simplify the whole deal. I'm just curious about there being 2 different ones (maybe more). The Ranchero was built on a Custom 300, Courier, Sedan Delivery frame. Maybe the column I scored was from a Fairlane 500 or something similar. Thanks for the advice. I'll probably use the original.
 
The steering box is unique to each model year (1957 - 58 -
59).

The box is definitely off a 1958?

The difference between MS and PS is within the steering arm.

OH!

Hold on to that take-off box as it can be rebuilt.
 
As KULTUZ mentioned the difference between manual and power steering is the reason for the length difference. If you do decide to use the long arm, you must use the matching idler arm too or the steering geometry goes out the window.
 
I was told it was a 58 box. It does have the recirculating balls and does NOT have the hole in the end for the horn wire (57). I don't want to play around with the geometry, so I'll use the original pitman arm. Good info about the MS vs PS difference. Thank you, guys!
 
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