Well I received the Red Head box that I ordered from Diesel Power Products. $ 338.00 with prepaid return shipping and they deferred the core charge. It took about 6 days to ship from Washington state to North Carolina. Great folks to deal with. They even upgraded the shipping from economy to UPS Ground for free. Installing it wasn't too bad. The worst part was getting the lines broken loose. 16mm tubing wrench and a lot of leverage but they finally came loose. The Pitman arm was pretty easy to get off. I used a 3 jawed puller and my impact gun. No problem. Everything went back together super easy and fast. You will need some help getting the bolts started to mount it back though. My wife was gracious enough to give me a hand while I held the box in place. Since my truck is lifted I could sit up under the front bumper to hold it. That took less than 5 minutes to do. I would suggest flushing the system before you change out the old box so you don't run the old fluid through the new box. The whole thing took about 2 hours from start to finish, including bleeding the air out of the system. You definitely want to have the front axle on jack stands to flush and bleed the system. Steering feels great with zero play. I highly recommend the Red Head box and the folks at Diesel Power Products are great to deal with. With the deferred core charge and prepaid return shipping it's really hard to beat. No I'm not affiliated with them in any way, they're just good folks that provide great service and a good deal. I really hope this helps some of you folks that are looking to replace your steering box. Good luck.

 

I haven't been able to find anyone that offers anything other than the stock ratio. I ordered the Redhead box today. I was finally able to get a spline count off the original box. Mine is a 36 spline with a build date of 04/99. I have read that the trucks built 03/99 and earlier have the 32 spline boxes and 04/99 and later got the 36 spline boxes. Don't know if that's true or not. Hopefully the new box will live up to all the hype and advertising. Time will tell for sure.

 

Not that I’m aware of, but who knows. The biggest/best names are Redhead and Blue Top, aa far as I know they only offer stock ratio


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Turbo, A recommendation like that is hard to ignore. I've only had this truck about 3 weeks and didn't notice the power steering leak until I was on my way home from Georgia with it. I've had plenty experience removing pitman arms and you're right about removing the box with it on it. It's much easier to wrestle with it on the bench than on the truck. I've broken a few pullers myself over the years trying to get them off. They can be a real bear sometimes. Do you know if anyone offers a different ratio box for the Super Duty? It would be nice to have a quicker ratio if that's possible. I've been looking and so far haven't seen any.

 

So far I love it, I wish I would have put it in the day I got the truck. I have over $10k in parts in my truck at this point, and the ~$450 I paid for the box, shipping & core return, & alignment is some of the best money out of that $10k that I’ve spent.

I’ve only had it in for a couple months, and the play hasn’t increased at all. Hopefully it stays this tight for many more miles. And yes it’s the same ratio as stock.

As far as counting splines, if you absolutely can’t read your pitman arm part number, the splines are separated into four sections/quarters on the shaft. You can simply count the splines on one section. If there are 9 per section, you have 36 total, if there are 8 you have 32

Also, not sure if you have experience removing pitman arms, but I recommend removing the box with the arm still attached so you can get at it better. I broke multiple pullers attempting to remove mine. It eventually jumped off with a puller on it right before its breaking point, heat, and a big hammer. Hopefully yours is easier

 

Thanks for the reply. I too saw that same list on Blue Tops web site and pretty much came to the same conclusion. It appears to me that the 99 f350's built 03/99 and earlier got the 32 spline boxes and after 03/99 got the 36 spline boxes. I have no idea if I'm right in my assumption or not. I appreciate your help in trying to get a handle on this. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to which trucks got what box. I really don't want to have to pull the pitman arm just to count the splines. I looked on my pitman arm for a part number and can't seem to read it. I'm going to try to get a better look at it tomorrow. It's been raining all day today so I couldn't get to it. My truck has an 8 inch Fabtech lift with 37x13.50x20 tires. I just recently bought the truck this way so I'm still trying to figure out what's what and what I'm working with. If anyone else has any info it would be greatly appreciated. So how do you like the Blue Top box? Is it the same ratio as the stock box?

 

I just ordered a steering box for mine, so I went through this. On Blue Top’s website, there is a list of pitman arm part numbers that correspond to 36 splines and 32 splines. The pic below shows pitman arm numbers for the 36 spline box

From what I’ve seen, 4x4s have 36, 2wds have 32. Not sure if that’s always the rule, but that’s what I’ve seen

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