The weather is unseasonably warm up here with temps in the 50's and sunny! My other project stalled so I took the chance to jump ahead a month and pull the steering box out of the Ford.
It's made by Bendix and it lives down here:
Removal wasn't too bad, it came out the bottom in an hour. Removing the pitman arm took the most time, the nut was on there really good for some reason and I had to heat it to be able to back it off.
So the deal is the thing was leaking, it's pretty filthy down there. This was Ford's early power steering box and it was kind of "meh" when new. Age has not done it any favors. The Bendix box was prone to overheating and leaking, Ford replaced it with a better unit a few years later. The problem is today that these Bendix units are rare and parts are rarer. There are two places that rebuild them but they need your core and prices start at $700 and go up.
These boxes have no bushings in them and the shaft just rubs against the cast iron bore doing nothing good, until things get out of round allowing shaft play and start leaking past seals. You can buy a reseal kit but unless you make things round again it will just leak some more. I basically have 3 choices here:
1. Send it out for a $700+ rebuild and squeeze my wallet until it cries.
2. Take it to a machine shop and have them install bushings in the housing, buy a seal kit and assemble myself.
3. Install a later Ford unit that requires the steering column and shaft be cut down as the later unit is taller.
I chose #2, because #2 is what I'm used to dealing with anyway so why go changin'.
Here you can see the shaft and the housing bore it goes into.
Here's some of the wear on the shaft at the bottom end.
It's not severe but you can see where things have been touching. I put a mic on the three spots it contacts the housing and it's just ever so slightly out of round. There was heavy oil in the power steering system when I took it apart. I'm guessing it was an attempt to slow the leaks as the PS system of this model/year calls for Ford type F transmission fluid.
I sent a letter off to the the machine shop tonight along with pics, hopefully he'll take on the project as he's been good about helping me with other cars in the past. If not... we'll cross that bridge we have to!