Steering column redo... As I mentioned before, the steering column was cracked and the lever detents were worn smooth. I lucked into a good tube from an early car at Hershey so I decided to graft it into the original seven tooth box. After measuring the total length at 43" I lopped off the bad parts:
And clamped the bare box in the mill,
So I could find the center of the shaft bore using a coaxial indicator.
I then used some basic math to figure the tool path and programmed it into the mill in G code:
And this magic happened: The black crustiness on the inside is from the original welding (forging?) process.
With a little fine tuning we ended up with this fitment:
Being cheap / poor I bought the repop 30-31 levers (they were $20 cheaper) and shortened them to fit my column before adding new levers. Fitting the levers was to worst part of the job.
Reassembled the box with the original parts (it was in remarkably good shape other than the ancient lube. I did install the tube versus the felt seal for the light switch shaft. The top bushing got replaced as well.
And finished up. Note that I left the weld stand proud on purpose to show those who would know that "something" interesting was done here.
I filled it with a combination of 140 weight gear oil and poly EM grease. No leaks.
And that was that.
