My son's Barracuda had manual steering when we first built it. It felt fine (it was a good condition used 24:1 box), but at the first autocross it was a handful, but not because it was hard to turn. It was just too many turns lock to lock. We found an old Diplomat police car and built a police car valved box with it and a small sector box. That solved the turns problem. The problem with a lot of the rebuilt boxes is that worn out parts were used and less than ample care taken when putting them together. You either need to do that yourself or used somebody like Firm Feel...