Ok so today I discovered that the pitman shaft seal in my steering box on my 79 f150 is leaking like a sum buck after thinking that it was probably was a hose that was leaking. So here's my question: I have quite a bit of slack in my steering wheel and I was wondering if a new gear box would fix the slack? If not would I be better off to get a pitman shaft seal to replace the old one vs a new steering box?

 

if the seal isn't too difficult to replace, maybe try that route first.

 

There's more than just the seal, you will need the sector shaft seal KIT .. because the seal itself was never available by itself.

Auto parts store so-called rebuilt gearboxes are nothing more than RESEALED gear boxes.

The Ford/Saginaw P/S gear box has a built in flaw, there are no sector shaft bearings, it rides directly on the housing. So before too long, fluid begins leaking from the sector shaft.

Red Head (redheadsteeringgears.com - Seattle WA) takes the housing, machines it and installs the sector shaft bearings that Ford omitted...on purpose...so they could sell a gazillion seal kits.

 

Red Head Steering's new box made my '77 a better driver than it ever had and I've had it since it had only 35,xxx miles in '86. I'd say the only thing I've done that may have helped more was when I swapped the whole linkage over from oem "inverted Y" to the '78-'79 style with one long tie rod and a drag link parallel to the track bar.

 

Oh boy well a gear box is gonna have to wait then since redheads are the only truly rebuilt ones! I'm gonna have to keep on feeding it PS fluid because I gotta save up to rebuild the engine in my 84 due to it suddenly not having hardly any oil pressure. Looks like I'm gonna have to deal with a leaky gear box for a while longer