1967 F100 Power to Manual Steering

[krugford]

I've got a question about Power/Manual steering on a 1967 F100. I currently have a truck that I am trying to sell to a friend of my brothers. There's a short list of things that I am fixing on this truck to make it road worthy/reliable as a 40 year old truck can get. One of the things on the list is to deal with the power steering. The truck has factory power steering with the saginaw box on it. It doesn't make noise and operates fine, other than the fact that it'll leak all it's fluid out just sitting there and quickly revert back to manual steering. I have NOT looked to see where it's leaking yet as I have just started working on it. I assume it's leaking at the large oring between the housing and the pump, but I'm not sure.

My personal preference for these trucks is to have manual steering. In my opinion, the power steering is too floaty and gives you absolutely no feel for the road. The guy I'm trying to sell it to agrees with me and would like manual steering if possible, or at least power steering that doesn't leak. It looks like the saginaw box is nothing more than a manual box with a hydraulic motor attached to the input. Can I just remove the pump and lines from this truck, cap off the input/output to the box and run it that way without any negative effects? Will that cause reliability/wear issues down the road for the next owner? Are there other major differnces between the boxes besides the obvious, such as steering ratio, internals, etc?

Here's a pic of what I'm dealing with: The Bendix box is the other power steering box available for these trucks. According to Fordification's website, the Bendix box is easily swappable with the manual box and was more common in the power steering applications for 1967. I guess I got lucky with the saginaw box....

I DO have another 67 F100 sitting around with a manual steering on it, however, to perform the switch, I'd need to swap the drivers side motor mount, the steering column, the pump, steering box, and probably the steering linkage to do the switch right and leave both trucks runnable. I'd rather not do that much work if possible, but I will if I have to.

 

[timster]

that very well could be the only difference, I am really not sure to be honest, bit out of my year range of knowledge on the f series. you could always get a rebuild kit for that gear box. or pick up a different gear box for it, but then again not sure the year range that will fit that truck. I have found advance auto parts website crosses parts with years and vehicles that they fit.