Well, I don't know a whole lot about steering boxes. When you said "was that wrong" did you mean your new box was bad? or that your old box was so bad that you had to get a new box?
Regarding your intake and carb. I've never run an Edelbrock Performer, but the consensus is that is okay, but no better than a factory 4 bbl intake. If your motor is not running over 5500 rpm it'd be okay.
There are better intakes out there, though, even for mild motors. We'd need to know a little more about your engine combination and car to get too specific, but for hot street cars some good intakes are the Edelbrock Performer RPM (much better than the Performer), the factory Sidewinder intake, the old Edelbrock F427 intake, the factory PI aluminum intake, the old Holley Street Dominator intake, and maybe the old Edelbrock Streetmaster intake.
If your motor is a little more strip oriented, the Edelbrock RPM will still do well, or The Blue Thunder single 4 bbl dual plane intake is great, but more expensive.
If you decide to keep the Performer manifold I would suggest using as tall a carb spacer as you can fit to increase it's plenum volume and help it's high rpm breathing.
The Edelbrock 750 carb would be fine choice for your big block unless you are getting really radical with it. By the way the Edelbrock carb's are not mechanical secondary. They are based the Carter carb design and have "air valve secondaries" which open based on airflow like a vacuum secondary Holley carb.
A 428 would be great. I don't know what a 428 T-bird is worth. Are you sure it has 428 CJ? If so, someone transplanted into the T-bird at some point as T-birds only came with regular 428's. 428 CJ's are pretty valuable. I'm just guessing, but a running complete 428 CJ might be worth $2000-$3000. Bare CJ blocks go for $500-$800 and up. You might look at the cylinder heads. CJ cylinder heads have 4 bolt holes around each exhaust port, 16 per side. Other FE's have 8 or 14 bolts per side. Hey, maybe you could buy the car and swap your 390 into the T-bird and sell it while keepin the 428 for yourself.
Can you tell us more about your car? What's the intended usage? gear ratio? How about the cam? Stall speed depends on what cam you're using more than anything else. Compression ratio? Anything else you can think of?
Have a good one,
Paul
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