Hello folks,

Sadly the '68 F-250 is officially off the road. The Bendix box is leaking enough to have mostly destroyed the bushings on the driver-side radius arm and the dust covers on the drag link. Dad took this truck off the road ~10 years ago because the Bendix box was leaking badly. I got it back on the road and had the Bendix box rebuilt through O'Reilly's (lifetime warranty on the box, as we purchased through them). O'Reilly's sent the box to a company in Minnesota, which I assume is Lares. Took ~6 weeks to rebuild and has started to leak a few months later.

I don't trust Lares to do a good rebuild as this box has had leaks twice already. Redhead Steering is exorbitantly expensive, especially considering I will have to give O'Reilly the box as a core to have the lifetime warranty cashed out. While I feel that Redhead is likely the end-all-be-all solution, I cannot afford roughly $1,000 worth of steering box on a college student budget.

This is technically not my truck and I read somewhere online that converting to a Ford style P/S system requires several modifications, including shortening the steering shaft. I have absolutely no desire to do any sort of substantial or permanent modification to this truck, nor would Dad condone it anyways.

Time to start saving for a Redhead steering box. In the meantime... another good truck off the road

 

You young kids with your fancy new technology. My manual steering works just fine.
I have noticed my arms are quite a bit larger in the year I've owned the truck.
Sorry to hear its off the road. I'm sure you'll sort it out.
Good luck.

 

Hah! Yep, young whippersnappers indeed!
Why when me & Fred were first cutting our teeth on trucks, tires were chipped from stone and steering meant leaning to one side or the other while planting feet firmly on the ground. Worked fine, but the "road feel" just wasn't there!

Yeah Mike, definitely a bummer to have such a nice truck off the road again so soon. And very frustrating for it to leak so bad, so soon.
What are the chances you can contact the rebuilder directly to see what if anything can be done to the existing box? Any chance it's just loose bolts or something, or did you already check those things?

Really clean truck you guys have for sure. Sorry to hear you're not getting to enjoy it.

Paul

 

I have no direct experience on this issue, but I wonder if a manual steering gear would be an option as opposed to a rebuilt power gear?

 

Why would you have to give your box to O'Reilly as a core? You had your box rebuilt through them with no core involved. These boxes can't be properly rebuilt unless you address the wear and wander on the sector shaft. This is done with machine work an a bushing. Which only redhead or blue top will do.

 

FWIW, the redhead website is NOT redhead.com... D'oh! Just in case you're at work when you search for them online.

 

10 years ago, you could have bought the apropos seal kit. Today, they're almost impossible to find.

Lower pic: Bendix P/S gearbox. There were 3 kits available, the master kit included the input and output shaft kits.

C6TZ-3E500-A .. Master Seal Kit // C6TZ-3E501-A .. Sector Shaft Seal Kit // C6TZ-3E502-A .. Input Shaft Seal Kit.

Obsolete parts are hard to find. If you snooze...you lose.

 

A complete seal kit is available from Red Head:
https://redheadsteeringgears.com/pro...-f-series-2x4/

I'm pretty sure Blue Top also offers one.

 

You can check out www.benchworksteering.com . They have a kit to change the pump over to the newer Saginaw. Then you could change the steering box with a junk yard Ford steering and it would all fit and be new.

Ford FE 360/390 Power Steering Pump Kit

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• Ford FE 360/390 Power Steering Pump Kit

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$329.95 — $389.95

Benchwork Steering Systems FE power steering Pump kit was developed for the older ford FE series engines. We use the popular quiet Saginaw power steering pump that has more flow and pressure. Our mounting brackets are C.N.C. Plasma cut and designed to align with existing mounting holes. This kit works with or without factory air conditioning and includes all new pulley, hardware, and custom JIC hoses.

• Hoses

This Kit includes:

• 1 Remanufactured steering Pump
• 1 New Reservoir cap
• 1 New Pulley
• 1 Belt
• 1 Pulley installation tool
• 1 Mounting Bracket
• 1 Support Strap
• 1 High Pressure Hose
• 1 Return Hose W/Clamps
• 1 Hardware

Make:Ford