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Hello all, I just bought a 1968 F250. It looks good but floated down the road. I bought everything to replace the steering parts from the rag joint down. After I replaced the Ford power steering gearbox with a rebuilt Ford box, the pitman arm would not align properly. After further inspection of the old gearbox the PO had ground off the guide splines to get what appears to be a non Ford Pitman arm to align enough so the steering would work…..
Does anyone have a line on what I understand is an obsolete Pitman Arm which after reading other posts seems to be the : C9TA-3590-E = Ford part number: C9TZ-3590-C. Specs on my truck:
1968 Ford F-250 Ranger (at least badges as a Ranger) the steering box is a Ford box, power steering, 2 wheel drive. Engine block part numbers says it is a 360, air cleaner cover says 390.
Thanks in advance!
Welcome to FTE.
Are you sure it is a Ford box? If it looks like the one below it is a Bendix. Which takes a different pitman arm. If you are correct and it is a Ford, you have the correct number. But I don't see any N.O.S. genuine Ford ones out there. I suggest posting a WTB on this forum's Marketplace.
You just have not found the right wrecking yard yet?
There is one around here that has 2000 gearboxes in an old semi trailer
You might not get far with numbers and money looking online for obsolete parts
Start there though. Obsolete parts in CA and end up matching one up at the wrecking yard
You might be able to swap the sector shaft in your power steering gear to the one you can get a pitman arm for
Here is a picture of two sector shafts Your 68 should have one of the long ones
They made 2 of each style (at least) one has three dead splines and the others have 4
Those gears used to leak fluid from the sector shaft seals quite regularly, and if allowed to leak for too long the sector shaft would need to be replaced
There were 2 available sector shafts and correspond to which pitman arm the truck had
I have to amend this as I've just learned the pitman arm linked above is for '75 and later year models. It will bolt up, however it is indexed differently to account for the greater distance between the P side tie rod and connection point to the pitman to accommodate the later style drag link. If used with the earlier steer links one can't center the steering properly.
I pulled a steering box out of a truck about a month ago that has the pitman arm you need. I was going to use it for my self but today I went to junkyard to kill time and im pretty sure I found another steering box with pitman arm that I can use. I will let you know tomorrow once I'm 100% sure yard was closing and I had to leave.
