ihave a 56 ford and i wasnna put power steering and i was told that rack and pinion is the way to go with a straigh axel, so i was looking ito the kits and they are about 600$ which isnt horrible but i was just wonderin could i salvage a rack and pinoin kit from a certain car or does it have to be the kit and is it really worth it to get a rack and pinion or is regular power steering good enough

 

Yep, regular power steering on trucks made up to 1964 is kind of non-existant. The available conversions are not even a close fit and everything requires major modifications. So go ahead and hit the bone yards, find a R&P from something. You mainly need a rack that will allow clearance for your steering shaft to run down and connect. Probably would be a good idea to reroute the column higher on the firewall to get a straighter line to rack. I have seen a few with several pillar blocks to fit on existing shaft angle. Not that great of an upgrade for my taste. One of my "help a buddy" projects is fitting a rack under his 61 unibody. I have a couple of them laying around that both may work. One is a three bolt from 74 Mustang II and the other is from a late 80's T-bird. You need to fab up a crossmember to mount the rack to. I did see one that was bolted rigid to axle and had slip joint in steering shaft. I personally did not see this as a doable option. Doing a conversion is not real complicated and if you do some research or copy an existing kit, should be able to fab something that should work fine.

 

Don't put a rack on a straight axle. Save your money.
To actually, kind of, work properly the rack must be mounted to the axle, then a slip joint of some sort used for the steering. Mounting the rack to the frame via a bracket will cause crazy bumpsteer as the axle moves up and down and the rack mounted solid.