I am working on a 63 tbird for a buddy. when we bought the car the alignment was scary.the car at 30 mph was all over the road. anyway I lowered it new master had the booster rebuilt.then I took it in and had it aligned the first shop barely got it in spec and said they would have to make shims and wanted four hours shop rate to do that.but said it should be good to go.well it was better but at 60 mph I thought it was going to kill me.so I took it back to them and asked them to try again.they did not try to get the alignment any closer to spec and told me the steering box was bad. Today I took it to a second shop and told him what was going on. he just called and said no problem on the alignment and if anything it has to many shims. but also said that something is very wrong with the box and needs to replaced. or repaired.my main question is this a common problem? I have never had to replace a box on a car .or are there other things I should look for or be aware of?
Years back , I had a regular customer that had a '63 T bird that had a sloppy gearbox , seems to me there were two different suppliers and one was better than the other.
Caster out of spec will cause it to wander. The toe being out will cause it to grab the lines in the road too. I don't know if the '63 had those big shims that could only be accessed from the bottom, which may have only been on the '64-'66? If so most shops won't have the correct shims or know how to do an alignment on the car. If you have access to the shop manual (may be the same as the Galaxie) I would do a steering box adjustment on it first.
Go down the page a bit, they got a pretty good exploded view of the 'Bird front suspension. I remember working on them now, a real nightmare too. http://squarebirds.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=11927
There's a caster adjustment at the lower control arm where it bolts to the strut rod, slotted holes. Move the caster as far positive as you can and try that. Those Tbirds like that were often set with negative caster but will drive much better with positive caster. . As far as the box goes, if the sector shaft adjustment on the top of the steering box is screwed in a long way, try loosening it a half turn or so and see if it might release some bind that someone before you has induced by over tightening.
I just picked up.car drives great he said the box still seems a little funky but not a huge priority.
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