I bought a steering column at a swap meet a couple years ago to use in my '68 Barracuda with manual steering and floor shifted 4-speed. The one that was in my car had been changed out long ago and was a column shifted auto. with power steering. Well I took the one apart that I had bought and repainted and fixed it up and such. Last night I was going to put it in the car and it's about 1 1/2" too short to reach the manual steering gearbox. It's longer than the one I had. I'm about to lose my mind. What's the deal? Am I doing something wrong? (not sure how I could be) Learning as I go is really getting old. Thanks in advance...

The inner shaft of the column must have collapsed a little bit. See if you can pull it out some.

Possible you got a PS column and would need one of these:

http://chucker54.stores.yahoo.net/mamastad.html

I forget all the detail when I changed the guts of mine from manual to PS...that was 20 years ago now.

I have a power steering column that was in my car and it is shorter than the one I bought. Compared it to my friends manual steering column out of a '69 Dart and the shaft at the bottom looks different but they are the same length overall.

When you had it apart did you notice if it has been collapsed any? If it is the correct column you can always slide it back out and make it work correctly. I've seen guys that stand them up on the end of the shaft when moving them around. If the column isn't tight they will shorten up. Is it possible it was an earlier A body column (pre 66)???

Just remembered when I put the column in the 69 Dart it was a little short also. I had the plate at the bottom of the firewall too far down the column which made the shaft seem too short. I couldn't figure out what was wrong until I noticed the steering wheel was too far away from the dash.

There are three bolts in slotted holes inder the dash that mount the steering column to the dash. There is some adjustment if you slide the column in and out to the extent that the slotted holes allow.