Wobbly Streering colunm

[Calvin C.]

I have a newly aquired 72 convertible. The steering column is loose, moves side to side. It is a tilt/tele. Has anyone taken one apart, if so is it dificult and what part is causing it to wobble. Will I need a new bushing or something similar. I am ordering an assemble manual but that may not tell me before hand what part is suspect.
cal

[Jack H.]

It's the 'Fat American' syndrome...

It helps to look at an exploded drawing to understand. There's a nice one in the Dr. Rebuild catalog! Here's the deal.

Prior owners typically 'abused' these columns by flipping the tilt to its fully upright position, and using the steering wheel as an assist to hoist their bodies out of the cockpit. When you get your column repaired, you'll want to teach yourself to lean your LH elbow against the rear door sill and exit that way vs. tugging/pulling on the steering wheel.

Now, inside the column is an upper shaft assy that consists of two hemispheres of pot metal joined by a pair of tilt/pivot pins. The pins are steel and require a special tool to remove them. The hard steel of the pivot pins 'bites/eats' into the potmetal of the upper shaft assy housing causing the holes the pins go through to 'wallow' out and enlongate.

This is where the 'slop' comes from and if you play with the steering column you should notice there's a distinct direction in its play; 10:00 to 4:00 direction which IS the path of stress created by the driver exiting the car.

There are two ways to get a fix. First, you can R&R the steering column, tear it down, use the special tool (some auto parts stores have/sell them) to remove the upper shaft housing and replace it. It's long been a GM discontinued item and Dr. Rebuild is the only place I know where you can buy an NOS assy, but CATCH-22, the good Doctor only lists the FULL housing assy in his catalog at something like $180 and you only typically need the upper half of the housing.

The other source for a replacement part is from your local scrap yard. It's the same upper housing component as used in equivalent GM passenger cars of the era with tilt/tele columns. Most scrap yards will sell you an entire used column for $50-100. BUT, you need to clamp the donor column in a vise and tug on it to test its integrity before you buy it!

Also, you can shop around and see who in your area does steering column rebuilds. Believe me they're out there and they generally get $150 or so to go through a column and put it back to snuff.

The second alternative to repair is trickier. You disassemble your column, remove the upper shaft housing, drill the wallowed-out/enlongated holes to get them back to a larger circular pattern. Now, have a machine shop fabricate a set of sleeves for you out of steel and install them. This is the BEST fix since you wind up with the upper column doing its tilt function on steel-to-steel bearing surfaces...

[Patrick H.]

Another Option...

Or, the third option is just to send it to Corvette Steering at www.corvettesteering.com

Tom is a great guy, and he does wonderful work on the columns. He also has lots of spare parts to fix them.

Patrick