My newet project I am doing a 40 ford truck cab, no fenders or hood SBC stock 38 ford frame. What should I start looking for in ways of steering boxes? Everything I have read says corvair or vega boxes cause they are too small for this setup and I have seen people using everything from old F100 boxes to BMW or toyota boxes. I would like to stay traditional but I want something that I don't need to worry about breaking as well. I saw an early 90's ford ranger box that I thought might work one time and might look for that, but just can't bring myself to say I put a foreign box in my hot rod. I love the look of cowl steer as well that might be option. Just need some direction cause I know by end of this winter I'll have about 10 different boxes sitting there trying to see what works best.
There are many ways to go. Also depends on if you are going standard box position or cowl steering.. or for that matter whether you are going to use traditional types steering or cross steer. Old ford boxes are the best if you want to go traditional. I think 1936 is the magic number for when they started getting good (i believe they abandoned the fixed sector design). I run a 37 ford in mine and it works great. F1 thru F100 are really good and really tough boxes too. These boxes are very simple and fairly durable. If they are in decent working order, top them off with some new lube and they'll be good to go. I've seen alot of modern type boxes adapted as well. Especially if you go cowl steerign since some like the ranger and bmw2002 have very long sector shafts that won't require lenghtening.
I got a '68 Barracuda box to do the cowl steering thing, doen't need to be reversed, and is made of lightweight aluminum. $60 off ebay.
That looks like it'd work pretty well, you'll have to extend out two inches or so it looks like. Looks similar to the F100 box I used, dimensions wise.
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