58 Ford Ranchero manual steering box pitman arm

[Pamlico]

Well, the manual steering box just gave up on my Ranchero. It was the roller bearings on the long shaft. Luckily, and I truly mean luckily, it gave out right in front of my garage upon returning from a cruise-in. It had been acting up and had a lot of play for a while and I had adjusted the pitman shaft all I could. In anticipation of this impending failure, I found a used 58 steering box at Carlisle in June. Fast forward to today and I am in the throws of making the swap. I noticed the pitman arm on the replacement box is about a half inch longer than the original one. I could easily use my old one but I am wondering, while I'm there, is there an advantage to using the slightly longer one? Better ratio(or not). And would that require a front end alignment, etc? Thanks!