steering column

Need more information on the vehicle. My '65 Classic has a clamp just below the mast jacket that seems to be there to stop the shaft from going up the jacket. Doesn't seem very effective if that's the purpose. I know that my home made rag joint isn't the proper thickness and makes my steering wheel bind on the collar, so I need to make it thicker or buy a new one.

edited after I went and looked at mine on a '75 Gremlin ^like they said^ it looks multi-functional; to hold the spring loaded bushing but also where it'll slip telescopically if the car is in severe front on collision... -proper names & description will be in AM TSM


Edited by amcenthusiast - Oct/20/2017 at 12:46pm

The lower shift slides inside the middle section of the shaft and the upper section is similar to the lower section. The shaft is not really meant to come apart and I think the TSM tells you it is not serviceable and needs to be replaced as a unit.

That said you will see that on the flat section of the middle bit of the shaft a couple of small holes filled with plastic, the lower (inner) shaft has a couple of grooves around it's circumference and it appears that plastic is injected here to keep everything in position. If you carefully apply brute force, you should be able to pull the lower shaft out, I say carefully, because there is a similar slip joint at the top and you don't really want to disturb that.

I've just been reassembling mine and what I did was drill the holes here the plastic is injected out to a slightly larger diameter and fill the cavity with a hot glue gun.

I think the purpose of the clamp is just to make sure that the lower section of the column collapses correctly, I can imagine over time things would corrode and the lower shaft might not slide inside the middle section like it is supposed to. It also provides a little more certainty that the lower bearing can't come out.

The whole collapsible column assembly is a pretty complicated piece of engineering when you look at it.