I rebuilt one with the Gates kit and it started leaking again worse than it did before about 6 months later. The rebuild is not for the faint of heart. There are a number of felt seals that you really need a stretching and shrinking sizer tool to install and the internal seal in the middle of the gear was a BEAR to get out and back in, there also has to be a special tool for this and or some sort of press adapter to install the new one smoothly. I have had sucess with only replacing the seals on the pinion shaft to fix the insanely annoying squeaking/rubbing noise they make when turning the steering wheel. I've fixed three of those so far (one for each truck). My opinion now is if they're leaking, they're trash because it has to be an internal bushing which doesn't come in any rebuild kit causing it to leak. I've seen tons of reman steering gears start leaking again shortly after being installed so I'm not much interested in spending $800 on one. GM for some reason decided to never sell the gears for these trucks new, they've only ever been remans even when they were still under warranty so any new gear you've found is aftermarket and I would be very weary of that. It probably won't feel the same.
I think the factory had some sort of flow test they did on the gears when new because it is interesting how they all take the "same" gear (only difference is truck vs. SUV has a different part number) but the gears in a Chevy or SLE/SLT Yukon feel much heavier than the gear in a Denali or Escalade. I've bought a bunch of used steering gears that's where I really realized that. I returned a few of them because of that. Every gear that came from a Denali or Escalade had the same nice light feel.
