I have a 1968 power steering column that is A-body length but it has a B-body firewall cover plate on it. I suspect it was a B-body column that someone wanted to use on an A-body and slid the two-pieces of the shaft shaft together more to make it A-body length and then injected new plastic in the little holes. But then, I suspect they couldn't get the B-body firewall plate off because they couldn't pull the inner tube out to swap the firewall plates due to the reverse switch pin. My question is, was the same two piece steering shaft used on A & B-bodies with the length just adjusted accordingly before the plastic was injected into the little hole? I hope my description makes sense.

I would have suspected it would have been easier to just swap the entire shaft rather then try to inject the plastic into the holes again. Could explain how it still had the wrong bottom fitting, someone couldn't figure out how to get the old end off the shaft without messing with the injected plastic.

Any of them I have had apart have a groove on the inner shaft where the plastic is injected. Back in our dirt track days, we messed with a lot of steering shaft lengths, but because they were on the dirt track, as long as the shafts couldn't pull apart while the car was running around the track, we were not too concerned about the broken injected plastic. We made sure the columns had space to collapse, and couldn't be pulled apart under normal use, and raced on. If the crash was bad enough the column shafts could be pulled apart, the car was toast, and the column was the least of our concerns.

I had one column pull apart, the front frame rail was pulled away from the trans cross member about 6", I was driving the car, lost the steering, the brakes, and the trans bell (auto trans) at the same time. I got pinballed around and ended up stopped with the back end against the front straight wall. That was one really screwed up car! We stripped the good parts off what was left of that car and scrapped it, and moved on.

The actual shafts - not the coluimns - are the same for A and B bodies. I used an A-body manual shaft to replace my B-body p/s shaft when I converted to manual steering - no problems.

I personally wouldn't worry about those plastic pins or whatever they are. With them removed and everything else in place in the car there is nowhere for the shaft to go.

A groove is present on the inside shaft of all of those that I have handled, which is where the plastic is injected. When we were racing on dirt tracks, we would experiment with different lengths of steering shafts; nevertheless, we did not worry too much about the broken injected plastic so long as the shafts did not come apart while the car was in motion. We hastily verified that the columns could collapse doodle jump and would not be separated under typical usage, and then proceeded. We were more worried about the car's wreckage and the possibility of the column shafts being torn apart in a severe enough crash.