Quote:

If I take the snap ring out I assume it will just pull off???



If your column is in your car, and you want to remove the upper die casting that the turn signal unit is attached to, you will have to separate the steering shaft from the upper bearing that is in the upper housing. To push the shaft out of the bearing, you will need to disassemble the steering shaft in the engine bay at the coupling so you can push the steering shaft downward. You will need enough clearance between the shaft and the steering box to do this, which might not be possible.

Maybe you could pull the housing upward off the steering shaft along with the bearing by using a setup similar to Tool C-4044 in fig. 6, page 19-36 of the service manual. But this is backwards from the manual, and you may collapse the telescoping shaft, which you don't want to do.

Looks to me, to be on the safe side, that you pobably need to remove the column from the car and push the shaft out of the housing like the manual says.

BTW, you can make a clone to Tool C-4044 by just buying an 8-32 all thread rod and cutting 3 pieces about 4" long. Screw these into the housing and push against the shaft with a regular 3-slot puller.

As you can tell from the thread size, 8-32, not much force is involved to push the shaft out of the bearing. As long as you don't collapse the shaft, yes, once the shaft is free of the upper bearing I.D., the upper housing should pull straight off. However, to reassemble everything, you will have to align the upper housing so it will lock onto the painted tube correctly, and push the bearing back over the shaft.

You might be a lot happier doing all this on a bench like the manual says.

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