With this post I am pretty much caught up with where I am now. 14 months just went by quickly with these updates.
I work long hours and travel quite a bit daily for work so getting out in my shop during the week generally doesn't happen. I am now down to just Saturdays when I get out there about 8-8:30am and work until 3-4pm. And that's usually all I can do in a week. I used to get much more time out there, but then 2020 came and my life was forever changed. I was a training instructor for PPG at their Hartford, CT training center, only 9 miles from home. In 2020 with the pandemic and everything PPG decided to shut down 9 training centers, mine being one of them. I ran my last class in September 2020, then spent 3 months closing down the facility to an empty building and effectively shut myself out of a job when I handed the building keys over to the realtor December 23rd 2020 and pretty much lost my job that I loved so much. Oh well things happen right?!
In any case back to happy things like working on a truck. This past Saturday my time was reduced to just a couple hours as I was dealing with some things for my dad. While out there I reinstalled the lower dash panel and steering column so that I can now make up the steering shafts and joints to connect the column to the steering rack. I thought I was golden as I had leftover 3/4" double D joint and a splined/double D only to find my column is a 3/4"x1" joint. So now I am waiting for the new joint to show up and make the connection.
Here is how I mounted the steering column to the dash and floor...
For the upper mount I was trying everything I could think of and ended up buying two different column drops. Nothing was working the way I wanted it to until a friend was over and took one look at hot and said to go buy a 2" exhaust clamp! Some times we over complicate things, like in this case. The
U bolt wraps under and around the column, and the cross piece of the clamp is welded to the dash panel. All I have to do is slide the column where I want it, put the U bolt in place and then two 9/16 nuts and tighten it all down.
The bottom is a swivel mount I got online. It has a ring and the swivel ball on the interior side of the column that goes through the hole in the dash, then on the engine side there is another ring and its all bolts together through the firewall.
And lastly, while digging out the swivel lower mount I came across the box I had stashed away from a previous project that I never used. Sometimes things just work out because I think they will be perfect here. I knew I wanted to change the arm rests but didn't know what to, then this box was in my hands. These are 1957 Chevrolet arm rests. I love the look and shape of them, and I think they belong as they are era correct for what I'm doing and will fit the overall style and theme I am going for.
