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Here's the steering shaft on my 1982 GMC. There's a lot of sloppiness in these steering
shafts. GM used a rag joint down here and that gets loose over time. A general modification
that you can do is replace these with a steering shaft from a Jeep Cherokee - the older ones
from the late 80's to the mid 90's. They eliminate the rag joint and tighten up the steering.
Here's the front of the OEM steering shaft. It just has one retaining bolt right down
here. I've already got this one loose. It is a 12 point, 7/16. Mine was so dirty from
power steering grunge that I couldn't tell but it is a 12 point, 7/16. Then this just
slides up off the steering box shaft pretty easily. This is the top end of the stock steering
shaft. This is a 5/8 inch nut and I've already got it loosened. Pull out the bolt. After
I undid the upper and lower shaft bolts I took the two nuts off the rag joint and separated
that so I could pull the two halves off. Nice and greasy...
The upper part takes a little bit of prying and wiggling but it will come off. Snake it out of here...
Here are the two steering shafts. The top one is the Chevy / GMC shaft that we just took out. The bottom
one is the XJ Jeep Cherokee shaft. They do have the same splines on both ends. It's hard
to tell here but they do fit on. This slides on the steering box end. Works really well.
The other end is sort of a "D" shaped end that fits on the steering column and it fits
on real well also. I did have to spread this opening on the Jeep shaft just a tiny, tiny
bit. That way it slides on the end of the steering column easily. The Jeep shaft, just
like the GM shaft, has two pieces. One fits in the other one and slides in the event of
a crash. In order to get the Jeep shaft in, you need to compress the shaft - in other
words slide the small end into the big end to get it in. When you get one side hooked
up then you extend it out and hook the other side up in the truck. Here you can see that
I've shortened the Cherokee shaft, the XJ shaft. you can see that it's shorter than
the GM shaft now. I did this by heating the shaft right here and towards the middle. You
don't want to heat it down here because there are rubber components and we really don't
want to melt those. There are supposed to be plastic inserts inside here between the
two shafts to keep it tight. What we want to do is to heat it up just enough just to
make the shafts collapse but we don't want to totally burn that plastic out because that
could cause looseness. So now we're going to put it in the truck and you might have
to heat it up again to extend the shaft. You can see here that the pinch bolt on the shaft
sticks into the cavity. So what we have to do is grind a little notch on top of the steering
column shaft. It's hard to see here but right on top of the shaft I have a little black
dot where I'm going to grind just a tiny little groove and that will let the bolt pass over
the top. Minor modification. Here you can see where I ground a little channel. I used
an air grinder with a abrasive stone bit. It didn't take much. It's not too hard. Snake
the shaft in here.... It slides on.... Bolt goes through.... And there you go.... Nice and snug and that
end is done. Here you can see the finished product with the Jeep shaft fully installed.
Goes back in just like the other one pretty much. I did end up having to heat the shaft
a little more to make it slide out and engage the steering box. It was fairly easy. It looks
a little bit better. And that's it!