The next day I had a preliminary fit with the parts on my van tilt column.
Just one problem though, the van column was a full 3” longer than either my Suburban column or the old 3 on the tree column from the Blazer. This wasn't going to leave room in the engine bay to clear that fancy cable shift mechanism.
Well that explained why the steering wheel felt too close when driving the Blazer.
I didn't realize that the intermediate shaft could be collapsed, but did find some mention of others sectioning the primary shaft and welding it back together.
Before:
After:
My MIG was cranked up to its highest voltage setting to get the most weld penetration possible. I felt very confident in it's torsional rigidity. I did contemplate welding on a piece of tubing over the outside like some of our other forum members here, but there wasn't much room between the weld and the bottom bearing on the column. I sometimes make scrap metal sculptures and I know exactly what happens to bearings and races that are overheated due to close proximity welding.
In fact, here's one of my creations from 2009:
He's called Überbird.
The column bolted into the Suburban very easily. After tightening down all of the nuts and bolts the cable adjustment was a straight forward affair.
After having only shifted the transmission by hand with a wrench it was very satisfying to click my way through each gear, P – N – R – OD – 3..... come on....
Turned out that my bracket modification left the tranny end of the cable a little far back. The column end was adjusted correctly and could run through its full movement, but the tranny end would need some further modification if I were to get all the way down to 2 and 1.
As a side-note, I finally took care of the dripping power steering pump at this time. All of the fluid had leaked out, so I detached the fittings from the pressure side to inspect why it wasn't sealing. Turned out I had assumed the adapter was NPT tapered thread when in fact it was straight. I made my own SAE O-Ring Pilot style of seal with an appropriately sized o-ring from my collection. This let my '70 design hose fit the '88 design pump and stopped the dripping.