Re: steering column bushing replacement

["Jim Reeve" <ultra@xxxx>]

I assisted Andy in his replacement of his steering collumn bushing. 
Granted, neither of us had done it before and we didn't really know 
what we were doing.

The instructions we had were just as you just said. But when we 
couldn't get the shaft separated from the u-joint we did some 
improvising. I personally dont remember removing the binnacle, but 
we did remove the kneepads, the two column support bolts, and then 
resorted to classic American engineering, brute force. We pulled out 
on the steering wheel, and out came the column, minus the secondary 
connecting shaft for the collapsability. That part was still in the 
ujoint. However, we were able to easily separate the two with one of 
us pulling on the remaining piece of the collumn, and the other 
prying open the ujoint seam (VERY rusty).

Putting it all back together, we initially tried reinserting the 
inner shaft from the collumn, and aligning it based on the grease 
marks. However it kept collapsing when we tried to put it all back 
into the u-joint. So we decided to reverse what we had just done. 
We took that inner shaft out again, *carefully* hammered it back into 
the ujoint, then simply slid the rest of the collumn back on over 
it. If you ask me, the extra steps of removing the kneepads and 
possibly the binnacle for this (which arn't hard at all) was 
definately worth it given the difficulty of working with that dang 
rusty ujoint.

Jim Reeve
MNDMC - Minnesota DeLorean Club
DMC-6960

--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "darryl" <darryl@xxxx> wrote:
> "to fix, you need to remove the binnacle, the knee pads, and the 
complete steering column by 
> seperating the U-joints at the intermediate shaft" - Andy, you must 
have too much time on your hands. There is no reason in the world to 
remove the binnacle to replace the bushing; you don't even need to 
remove the knee pads unless you really want something extra to do. 
Just mark the shaft where it meets the upper u-joint, unbolt the u-
joint, unplug the wires, and remove the two column support bolts.