On the '55 2nd, the steering box is mounted inside the frame, as yours is, exept for the LCF trucks, which may be the picture you saw.
I would strongly advise against a shorter pitman arm, as that will only serve to make the steering worse than it is. The best bet to correct the steering problem and keep the lowered ride hight without subframing or suing an IFS conversion would be to look into a dropped axle, like one from
Sid's. You will definitly want to get away from the setup that the PO put under it, as from the description, it sounds very unsafe. The spring under conversion isn't so bad (not a fan of that), but using blocks on a front axle is very unsafe, and illegal in most states.
