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Ok, back at it. Upper bearing replaced  Lower bearing replaced, shaft installed, and sleeve/spring/snapring installed  Tilt mechanism reassembled  Lower bearing housing:
and installed, along with the lower column mount & retainer  Column going back in...  ...and done!  So naturally, as soon as i finish a repair on one bronco, another desires attention  Felt a weird clunk when turning the other day, and i immediately knew what happened. One of the steering column bearings had failed. So the column is now out:  Just the process of getting to this point bearings have been falling out, so we caught it just in time, before the column got damaged too badly  The large tilt bearing has failed  With the shaft out you can see part of the bearing race was still on the shaft  Bearing has completely disintegrated  I had to drive it for a couple days after it happened, and you can already see wear on the inside of the housing  The small upper bearing looks ok, but its not
Looking at the other side, you can see the race is split  Unfortunately, the ujoint in the shaft is also worn out. Fortunately, i had a few spare columns in the shed  Picked the junkiest one and stripped it down for the shaft. Fortunately, this one has a ujoint that is nice and tight.  So i rummaged thru the cabinet, and found a full set of bearings, and an upper serdive kit as well! So we're good to on parts to rebuild this column  Lower bearing (also the same as the upper bearing)  Large tilt bearing  And then thsi is the upper bearing service kit, which includes a bearing (not pictured), tapered sleeve, bushing, spring & snap ring  Later in the week we'll get this thing slapped back together good as new! Never got to take the 88 for a test drive. I got the headlights all set and roughly aimed, with a plan to drive it to work one night and then adjust the headlights to get a good pattern. But when i went to turn the key, nothing happened. Well, thats not true. Something happened. The column broke! Im going to give you the abridged version: the ignition lock cylinder actuator rod broke.  Fortunately, Dorman makes a replacement, which is actually pretty cheap on Amazon. Unfortunately, replacing it requires the complete disassembly of the steering column:  While i was in there i figured its now or never, and i replaced the turn signal/hazard switch mechanism.  i spent a couple days cleaning up parts and slowly disassembling/reassembling the column, but all is now well, and the column is back where it belongs!  I do have around 80 pics of the process, so the plan over the next week or so is to get them all resized so i can put together a full gallery of pics on how to completely rebuild the column. |
