Ok, so after reading all this I'm still not clear- way back when I took apart my old gear box and damn if those balls didn't go flying- but I took out the steering shaft first, and never even got the sector shaft out.

It was confusing the hell out of me to see what freds40 was getting out because it didn't look anything like what I had seen before.
Now I am thinking that when I took out the steering shaft first, I inadvertantly dissassembled the whole whole steering shaft thing and the balls spilled out of the guts (used grease as mentioned before to line the internal worm gear then thread the actual steering shaft back in to fix it) and it seemed to work ok.

However, if I'm reading this right and follow freds40's instructions removing sector shaft first, that will permit the WHOLE steering gear part to come out and the internals with the balls will not be exposed unless that little tube I saw on freds40's pictures comes loose then you just reload through the tube?

I was starting to think there were two different kinds of gear boxes and I ended up with the sucky one.

Is this correct?  Thanks.