I've come to realize that a intermitant cluck in front end is the steering gear. Who's got the best price/ quality for the dollar out there?

 

Personally I'd just go to an Auto Zone, O'Reilly's, Advance or someone else with a lifetime warranty. Compare the prices between them. Redhead was once considered the best but there seem to be numerous complaints about them lately plus they're expensive and have a limited warranty with dubious customer service.

 

I replaced mine with a redhead last fall, it works very well......was it worth it you ask? As far as I'm concerned the answer is 'yes' because it made my truck drive better than any vehicle I've ever owned. That being said maybe any new box would do the same thing........I liked the fact that redhead claims to machine out the bushings and replace them with roller bearings and I feel like that should make a longer lasting gear assembly. Jmho

 

If you choose Advance, use coupon code TRT30, buy on line and do in store pick up, saves $50 or 30%. If the unit runs $200, you'll save $50, anything under $150 gts you 30%. Great deal, works on almost everything they sell.

 

Moog from Advance use coupon as stated above.

 

I have definitely hear bad things about Redhead through the Corvette club,most of those cars get maybe 500 miles a year or so and there where warranty issues so he was out of the picture. I'm looking at a a few vendors I work with and will let you all know what I decide. I will get the best bang for the buck and pass it on,thanks for all the input

 

Man, I almost let another opportunity to rag on Red Head slip by me!

Nah,I'm just kidding - It's water under the bridge now.

I would add to 69CJ's suggestions that you also check out NAPA's gears. They also have a lifetime warranty. They sell 2 units, one is sold as new, the other is a reman. I bought the new unit. Prices are reasonable: $210 reman with core or $485 new no core.

good luck.

 

Besides a lifetime warranty my main point is getting it from a store that is near by and nationwide. Warranty does little good, in my op, if you have to mail the old unit to BFE and then wait for approval and the shipping of the replacement. Also the first shipping will be on you.

 

Absolutely agree on this point.

Autonation Ford had steering gears on the shelf when I checked, but to your point the business of sending off the core, waiting for a credit, what if there's an issue with the new one....yadda yadda, I said screw it, I'm driving 5 minutes down the road to get my new steering gear.
Something like this I think it's wise to source locally from a national vendor in case anything comes up.

 

I spent countless hours on my full size bronco replacing ball joints, tie rods and using remain boxes to get the damn thing to drive well. even with all this work done my wife and 16yr old daughter at the time wouldn't touch it. I broke down and bought the Red-Head box 4yrs ago and have had zero issues. the bronco steers like a car and my daughter drove it every day to high school and my wife drives it to work at least once a month.
my thought is whats your time worth. a steering box swap isn't necessarily easy or a quick job. I can say the quality of the RH box is top notch. in the end its what your comfortable with.

 

You bought yours 4 years ago. You need to read some of the threads about units bought in the last year or two and the comments on their customer service. I don't have an axe to grind with RH but I do read the writing on the wall. Companys do change and sometimes it's not for the better. Hopefully their change is temporary.

 

I can tell you a lot's changed at Red Head in the 4 years since you bought yours, at least from where I'm standing.

I bought one less than 2 years ago and installed it along with ball joints, tie rod ends, and drag link and an alignment. Truck was fine until about 8 months ago when slowly but surely the drift and wander came back. checked all my linkages and everything was tight, except the clunk in the gearbox.
So this was about a year and half of use, or almost 18K miles, and the Red Head was done. I drove it until it was just too annoying, which was sometime in May I installed the NAPA unit. I guess I had a little over 25K miles on the Red Head.

Oh yeah, the first unit Red Head sent me was a leaker and I took no delight in getting back on the phone with the annoying 18 year old kid they had answering the phone at the time either (BTW, I guess he's 20 now and all grown up). So I had to pay full price/core AGAIN to get a 'good' unit sent to me.

...And they're in Seattle and I'm in Greenville, SC. Can't get much more shipping distance than that.

I dunno, maybe it was payback for Boeing coming down here and opening a non-union plant in Charleston and pissing off everybody in Seattle.

The value of my time is precisely why I'm not ever gonna buy the Red Head product again.

Sorry to the OP, I guess I'm back on my soapbox....

 

Well sense they are local to me I might just stop in and have
a chat with the Big Boss. I have also been reading the bad reviews
and have not gotten around to replacing mine because of that.
Who knows might be fun or I might get tossed out on my ***.

Sean

 

Thanks Sean.

My guess is just simply that while it's a relatively smaller family owned local business, they are putting out more volume of product than they ever have, and while that's great for business, perhaps the systems are not in place to ensure that the product being sent out at these volumes is the same quality as what was being produced some time back at perhaps more manageable levels.

 

I would agree that maybe that's part of the issue. I'm sure that when the "group buys" we're going on they were overwhelmed as a small shop. But I think another issue may be the recyclable core that they and everyone else is getting in. As our trucks are getting higher in mileage there is more wear in the worm and sector gears and I'm not sure if those parts are available as an aftermarket supply.

So if depending on the standards you have to either toss many more usable cores as out of spec or recycle parts that are wider in tolerance then what you used to use. I'm sure a small shop does not have the resources to do a salvage industry sweep to obtain rebuildable cores like the major rebuilders do, nor the profit margins to eat cores that are not good. But this is speculation on not having aftermarket replacement gears, and if those replacements are as good as the production line parts were.

Getting a rebuilt from a core that has 50k miles on it is much different then a rebuilt core with 150k if the worm and sector is not replaceable.