This article covers the steering column, steering shafts and rack and the steering wheel.
Two double-ended splined shafts, three UJ’s and a lubricating 'Heim' rose-joint spherical rod-end bearing' (not my words)….
The first thing to do was to drill a hole in the bulkhead for the column. Drilled the hole just a tad bigger than the diameter of the column shaft, slotted it in and temporarily bolted it in place. For securing, there are two dashboard cross-member fixing points and a chassis mounting bracket which holds a regular 43 mm exhaust bracket that clamps around and secures the column shaft.
The top steering shaft is supported by a heavy-duty self-aligning rose joint bearing, and the lower shaft slots into the steering rack. All this is held together by three stock UJs.
Dry fitted everything together, not forgetting that each UJ needed to be mounted with subsequent spline bolts 90º out of phase with each adjacent UJ. No idea why, but that's what it is. Also, each shaft end needed the groove filing a bit to accommodate the bolt. This is to provide an extra [physical] locking mechanism for the splined shaft.
Disassembled everything [again] and drilled out the bulkhead to accommodate the steering shaft rubber gaiter. I also had to repaint the lower end of the steering column casing as I scratched it many times when trial fitting.
Fitting was a bit of a chicken-&-egg situation. I positioned the column (with the steering wheel temporarily in position) for a comfy driving position (there's ~2-3 cm to play here); this consideration needs to be factored in for the rose height and its adjustment range i.e. if I have the steering wheel further away from the dash', the top-shaft would have to be a bit higher. There is plenty of height adjustment room on the rose-bearing.
Masked up the chassis just in case I dropped something, then dry-fitted the UJs and shafts to work out what I had to shorten or file.
Assembly was straightforward, but I did have to cut about 1 cm off one end of the lower shaft as it was too long. This is normal procedure for the GD Euro as the shafts are stock... So far so good.
Marked up for the UJ bolts and filed the spline ends 'key' groove to take the bolts. Then, when everything was in place I adjusted the height of the rose joint and tightened that up (after greasing the bearing.) Fitted the washers and nylocs and all looked good.
The final job was to tighten up the steering shaft clamp and put the proper bolts in the steering column brace. I will also be putting a dab of yellow paint over the UJ bolt/thread to provide a reference to indicate any slackening… Very important.
