moltenmetal

Gear box went out on my 96 f150 5.0, I know I should go with motorcraft or redhead but I just can afford it right now. Do I dare put faith in O'reillys and buy the $160 box. She told me lifetime warranty (limited in sure)and $80 core charge

BLDTruth

Buy a junkyard replacement for $75 and then use yours as a core to buy a redhead.

The parts house ones tend to go bad within 6 months to a year.

clintm6

Yep, I agree with BLDTruth! I went cheap with a steering box and within just a few months its back to sloppy steering again. I'm changing out all the tie rods this weekend, then probably next year I'll be changing out the steering box to a Redhead. Wish I would have just done that to begin with, would have been cheaper in the long run...

88xlt

In what manner did your gear box fail?

terry274

I spent extra money to get a Motorcraft steering gearbox from Rockauto. It had slop in it. I sent it back and got another one. The second one was better but not great.

I wish I had spent the extra money on the Redhead. Search the internet, there is a company other than Redhead that does a premium gearbox but I can't remember their name.

moltenmetal

I ran out of power steering fluid on a road trip drove it 15 miles to the nearest gas station, refilled the reservoir/bled the system. The steering progressively got tighter. Now I can't even make a small turn w/out it lunging. I tried adjusting the gear box but it's too far gone. I know it's not my pump the fluid gets hot after I drive it. It whines a little but no more than any other ford pump or before I ran it out of fluid.