1956 steering telescoping adjustment

[knuckle47]

A bit of a surprise for me. I grabbed my steering wheel to help get out of the car and the wheel telescoped out towards me. Well I know they all have this feature but I never unscrewed the column “lock” and then looked down at the column and saw that this pulled up from the directional signal assembly. It is attached at the steering box so I’m not sure what I am looking at to set this properly. The directional assembly will rotate easily from its normal position to 90 degrees either side of normal.

I will pull the steering wheel to look under this but It was too cold out to really dive into the problem but having a good starting point would be a big time saver when it warms up slightly. Any ideas?

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[biddle]

Subject "1956 Steering Column Question" has been updated to summarize your post.

 

[doug7740]

It looks like what has happened is the upper steering column hub (3511) has separated from the tube. These two parts are only pressed together. For added security the hub and tube can be pinned by drilling three 1/8 inch holes through the tube into the upper hub to accommodate 1/8” dia.-1/2” long roll pins. Use caution when drilling these holes to prevent drilling into the upper bearing cavity.

doug7740
1955 Thunderbird Blue





The steering column hub has separated from the tube



1/8 inch holes drilled



Roll Pin Installed

 

[knuckle47]

Whew! This solves my problem…. And easily at that. Wondering if this is a common issue or something that may occur due to another “incident”
Clearly, you have seen this before and actually have an answer I would not have come up with ! You’re right, your hands have been on every part 😉
As my grandmother used to say…. If these walls could talk.