Well guys, the world is a safer place! Spent the warm, sunny day yesterday installing my freshly re-done Saginaw 525 recirculating-ball manual steering box that Redhead Steering remanufactured for me, into my '67 Dodge Town Wagon! These Saginaw 525's were used in many Dodge trucks at least from earliest 50's up to 70's, and I think beyond that.

[www.redheadsteeringgears.com]

This is the second reworked box I've installed, first hardly lasted 3 months. That one wasn't any good out of the box to begin with, too much slop! Quite sure that first company used low-bidder Hong Kong bearings. They'd reportedly quit rebuilding the Saginaw 525's after that fiasco with mine...

I requested Redhead send me back the parts removed this time but they said that isn't practical due to the nature of their remanufacturing process which involves quite a bit of machine work. I decided to believe that. Instead emailed me detailed closeup photos of the extra precision machine work they did, which often exceeds the original equipment level of machining.

I was happily able to swap out the box without jacking up the truck or even taking off driver's side wheel. It was tight, but just enough room to get in behind there and work, at least on my truck. It was good to see the new box's sector adjustment screw head was a very tight fit up against my starter. It was sticking out with about 1/2" more of available adjustment, instead of being flush with the lock-nut and adjusted all the way up like the trashed box I removed.

Got a chance to take her for a spin afterwards and dang near piled it up, steering was so precise and accurate I was over-correcting after years of bad habits! Once I got used to it she was GREAT! The truck's never steered this well before in the 37 years I've been driving it, nor have I ever driven another Dodge manual box that steered as well - ZERO play - very pleased so far! Now if it will just maintain that level of precision for a few years I'll be a happy guy. You can darned well bet I'll post up here if it fails to please.

I'd say Redhead charges roughly 10%-15% more for their Remanufacture service than your average 'rebuild' but from what I've seen so far it's well worth it, compared to the other 'cheaper' vendor I dealt with the first time. With Redhead, from what I saw in the pictures of mine that they emailed me [which unfortunately I can't post here] and from what I read on their website, I'd call their service a 'Remanufacture' due to their extra machining processes, as compared to a simple 'Rebuild' by just sticking in a couple of bearings like others. We'll see...