Someone please send me in the direction of a steering gearbox that isn't complete garbage. I'm at my wits end with this nonsense.

This is the 3rd gearbox installed in less than 2 months.
The last time I took the XJ to get an alignment this past summer, the mechanic said there was enough slop in the box to warrant replacing it. Rode around on it until the end of November before deciding to address it.
Ordered a reman unit, installed it, and that unit failed just over a month later in December. Pitman arm shaft seal blew out and dumped all my fluid on the road. 3.5 hours later and tow truck finally shows up to drop it off at the house. Warranty return #1.
Ordered another reman unit that same day and installed it when it arrived the next weekend. That one had a dead zone between 11 and 1 o'clock and made my pump whine constantly. Warranty return #2.
Ordered a brand new gearbox that showed up yesterday and got installed 5 hours ago. This one is super easy to turn left, but more difficult to turn right. It feels kinda 'squirrelly' when lane changing, but is infinitely easier to keep straight than the last one and doesn't make my pump whine, so I'm chalking that up as an improvement, if nothing else. Super quick to return to center when turning right, slightly slower centering when turning left. Steering feels about the same when turning left/right while the front end is lifted off the ground.

Almost everything steering related is brand new at this point, with the only outliers being the telescoping steering wheel shaft and the pump (Did a rebuild of that today, though). Quite literally the only original parts left.
ZJ knuckle swap, new upper/lower ball joints, HD high clearance crossover steering linkage, OTA trackbar, gearbox spacer, sway bar, sway bar bushings and links, and long arms.

Is this yet another bad gearbox or can I finally start looking at other components as the culprit?

Factory gear box or no?

Where are you getting them from? Local Box store? Napa? Rock auto?

What's your procedure on fluid flush or just popping hose connections, swap and refill?

Factory gear box. Nothings changed on that front yet.

Sourcing from Rock Auto, currently. AutoZone and Advance are using the same manufacturers as Rock Auto anyways, and even including shipping it's still cheaper than the box stores.

I'm using fresh fluid each time. Its always been a gearbox issue, so I'm always draining the reservoir and lines before disconnecting them from the box anyways.


I forgot to mention on my first post, but new lines were put on back in December. I'm replacing the orings each time a new gearbox goes in. We have loads of them here at my work place.

PSC and Red Head are the only 2 companies I would use for a gearbox these days.

I love my Jeep, but not enough to drop $1100 on a PSC gearbox. Thats 1/3 of what I paid for this thing. Lol.

The red head is much more promising looking, though.

Assuming that this current gearbox is not causing my current steering issues, it'll be some time before I want to remove everything in the way of the gearbox, again. Three times is two times too many for less than a month into the year.

I'll definitely keep them in mind though.

I installed a redhead box on my XJ and my Superduty and had no issues, but if I needed to get a new box now, I would get a Bluetop