Shifting/Steering Removal

Saturday afternoon, I saw my ever-helpful neighbor Frank out in the common drive our townhouses share, and asked him to come over and take a look at something real quick.

Two hours later, we've mostly got the steering jacket and related hardware out of the car. Gotta love neighbors!

I'm going to write this post up with photos in the order that they were taken, for the most part - this is not the proper order to remove all of this stuff, as I discovered. :/

The passenger end of the steering jacket, with the steering column and the guide pin at the end of the shifting tube (the flathead piece on the right) as we're getting started.

The steering column bracket, mounted from below by a pair of posts that insert upwards and held on with a pair of nuts. A thin metal band holds the steering column to the bracket; one end has a cylindrical piece that fits into a notch on the far side of the bracket, and the nearer end has a post with a nut holding the metal band in place. Easy peasy.

First we get the steering coupling loose. One bolt, the one that goes in laterally on the right end of the coupling, I removed some months ago. Yet to come off are some bolts/nuts/cotter pins holding the coupling together.

With the steering coupling loose, the steering tube can be pushed up, bringing the hardware attached to the steering wheel end out with it, including a ring with bearings sealed inside.

Still a bit of wiring that passed through the steering jacket that needs to be pulled out. The cloth wrapping was rotted away in a few spots, so getting the these spots to move through the narrow passage available required a little tugging at times.

Now to start pulling apart the bearing body. First order of business is to detach three ball joints - two on the left, one on the right.

Next to come off is the intermediary lever (I'm looking in the old parts book PDF for names - no idea why this is called this, yet). We remove the bolt/nut holding the back end down on the splined end of the selector lever shaft, and wiggle the intermediary lever off the end. At this point the selector lever and the attached shaft slide right on out as well.

Next off is the lever that fits onto the splined end of the shifting tube. This is attached just like the intermediate lever; bolt/nut holding it onto a splined end.

The front end of the steering column is another spline situation. After pushing a large flathead screwdriver into the gap and twisting a little to loosen it up, and a few squirts of penetrant, and quite a few whacks on the sides of the attached piece with a rubber mallet, the coupling part comes away.

With that coupling part free of the steering column, said column slides right on out through the steering jacket from the passenger side. Here we've slid the coupling part back onto the splined end for the time being. Beware Frank's ugly feet.

Next up is unhooking the parking brake. There's a huge winged nut holding the cable end onto the lever - this takes some oomph to move after fifty-three years, but we free up the cable end.

Now we start looking at the inside end.

The steering jacket, besides the mounts shown earlier, is attached to the toeboard with six bolts that thread into cage nuts on the other side of the toeboard. There's a rubber sealing sleeve that sits behind this mounting plate. That part is going to be fun to find for less than an arm and a leg, I fear.

After the six bolts come out, the jacket has nothing holding it up, so it wants to lay down and take a nap. I end up hauling a mostly-useless space heater out, set it on the floorboard, and prop the steering jacket up on it. It's not perfect but it does the job.

Next to come off is a circular clip that has two small holes to use to open it up.

Here, Frank attempts to get the clip off with a pair of small tools. This does not work as planned. And as I have no proper tool to get this piece off, and neither does Frank, we kind of call it a day at this point.

But, not to be defeated, Frank hits up another of our neighbors who, like Jeff Spicoli's dad, "has an aweeesome set of tools" and lays his hands on the necessary tool. He then sneaks into my garage and removes the circular clip while I wasn't looking.

Sunday! Time to get back at it. I don't have Frank around to assist/guide today, so I'm on my own.

First thing I'm going to remove is this small plate on the bearing body. Frank gave it a try yesterday, but obviously just a cursory poke, as I was able to loosen these two screws without too much effort.

The plate has a small gasket on the inside - another fun part to find, joy.

Inside is a piece that holds the selector lever shaft, another splined end situation.

At this point on Sunday afternoon, I was unsure how to proceed - the bearing body would not pass over the end of the shift tube, and I wasn't 100% on the gear inside this small chamber. Fortunately, later that evening, I finally stumbled upon the proper job PDF in the service manual CDs, and could continue the next day. I'm finding that not knowing the terminology of various parts is a handicap as far as sniffing out what job documents are applicable.

Monday afternoon and I'm back at it. First thing to remove is the small bolt holding this piece onto the end of the selector lever. Fortunately this whole area is still quite greased up, and the selector lever slides right on out once the bolt is removed.

Once the selector lever itself is out, the part holding it in pops right out as well.

And now the remainder of the bearing body can slide off the end of the shifting tube.

Next up is to get the shift tube itself removed. First task is to push the guide pin that is at the end of the steering jacket inwards. (We had removed a couple of washer-like pieces holding this end steady on Saturday.) Now that the rest of the hardware is removed, the shifting tube can move inwards, and the guide pin can be removed. In this case, as there is a spring involved, the guide pin shot out right past me.

Now the shifting tube can slide laterally inside the steering jacket, allowing the threaded end that the shifting lever attaches onto to slide through the side of the steering jacket, and the whole shifting tube pulls out via the engine compartment end.

The pesky spring on the passenger end of the shifting tube. This took a little wrestling to get loose. A fair bit of gunk on the end, and this is after I'd removed some of it.

And with the shifting tube out, the steering jacket is free.

Here's the engine compartment, sans shifting/steering hardware;

And the passenger compartment end.

Here's the remains of the rubber seal between the toeboard and the steering jacket mounting plate. Not terribly shot, but still, I'll be replacing it. I wonder if I couldn't simply cut a new piece out of a flat piece of rubber of the same thickness.

The paint on the firewall beneath the steering column has seen better days - very flaky. No matter, it'll all be coming off in the stripping process.