Went hunting this week with my father-in-law and a friend. Our hunting camp is about 30 miles from where I live and mostly long twisty country roads with an average speed of 55. Once you get to the area, the camp is a couple miles up rough road into the Allegheny mountains. As I turned into the camp site and straightened my steering wheel out, POP! The steering shaft snapped in half inside the steering column.
I knew the bottom bearing was getting bad so I had already picked up new bearings in hopes of rebuilding the column soon, I just didn't have any idea it would be this soon. Apparently the bottom column bearing was not only bad, but it had been long gone and only the outer bearing race was left long before I even got the truck. So long that the shaft had worn down to a taper and finally snapped. Thank God it snapped as I was pulling into the campsite and not on the main hardball at 55 mph. I would have ended up in the river upside down for sure. I pulled the column Tuesday evening at camp.
So we hunted Wednesday morning and headed back into town on Wednesday afternoon. I ran to my favorite scrap yard and pulled a column from a donor truck there. I snagged everything from the rag joint to the steering wheel just in case I ran into trouble. Showered and threw on a clean pair of work clothes and headed back to camp. Hunted Thursday morning and headed back to campsite that afternoon to get to work. I performed emergency surgery on the two columns in the bed of the truck. I just pulled the shaft from the donor column and put it in the old column. The donor was from a 3 on the tree truck, my old column was 4 speed floor shift.
I used the new top bearing, but the old 3 speed bottom bearing was actually in good shape so I left it for now. Plan was to get home safely, then pull the column one more time for a thorough rebuild in the very near future.
My old non-existent bottom bearing on bottom, new donor bearing at top.
Not sure if the donor truck was a 67 or 68, but it had a big back glass and side markers on the front fenders so I assumed 68. Hoever, I'm not familiar with this style of column plug. The only ones I've ever seen were the rounded style like the one on my 68.
Donor column flat plug
My 68 column rounded plug
