I rebuilt the steering column with the intent of swapping from power steering to manual steering. After the column was done, I changed my mind and decided to keep the power steering.

I pulled out the column shaft and swapped in the original lower shaft. I wanted to hold the two pieces together tightly but still allow movement in an accident. This is what I came up with...

The upper shaft just has indentations where hot plastic was injected into the assembly to hold it together.



After marking the correct location, I drilled all the way through the upper shaft with an 1/8" bit. My father-in-law had some scrap lexan lying around that he thought would work as a "pin" to hold the two halves together. He turned a couple scraps into "pins" and I pounded them through the assembly. We heated the head of a nail with a torch and used that to melt the ends to lock them in place. Finally, I drilled through the center of the pins with a 1/16" bit. The shaft is held tight but it should easily collapse in an accident.


Last fall I shipped the steering box to Firm Feel. They did a stage 3 rebuild on it. I was able to get it painted and installed on the K right before it got cold.

A couple weeks ago I got this next piece done. I'm going to use a reproduction Tuff wheel on this car. I bought an adapter at the Mopar Nats last year. The problem is that the 68 column was never designed for the adapter. The 68 column is smaller in diameter then the 70 column that the adapter was designed for. The upper column rubs on the inside of the adapter. I had to sand the adapter to clear the column. That wasn't a big deal. The issue is that the adapter really looks like crap on the smaller column. Here is what the adapter looks like on a 68 column. UGLY!!!!


I was looking at a Dart under a tent in the swap meet at the Nats last year and noticed it also used the factory tuff wheel adapter. That car had an aluminum trim ring on the bottom of the adapter to help transition the two pieces. It really looked good. The owner said he bought the car with that trim piece already installed so he didn't know who made it. I took a couple pictures of it and made my own.

I started with a 5x5 piece of 1/2" aluminum. After cutting out the center hole on my father-in-laws mill, we mounted it to his lathe and turned the outside to the correct diameter.


Then we readjusted the lathe and machined an angle into the piece.


Here is the trim ring test fit onto the wheel adapter.


I still needed to do some hand sanding on the trim ring when I took this picture but this is basically what it looks like installed. I really like it. It makes the adapter look like it was made for the earlier columns.