Is there anybody who can help me link my steering column to my rack? I had a mustang II frontend pull in to my 49 chevy truck. I going to us my old steering column. I'm going to fab a lower column mount out of aluminum. Any help will be appreciated Thanks!
Hey chuck, I did it with my 37. You need to DD ujoints and a couple feet of DD shaft. One joint needs to be splined on one end to match your rack. Cut your old steering shaft off so a couple inches protrude beyond the firewall. Now slowly and carefully grind this part of the shaft to accept the DD u-joint. Worked for me!
I have. You will have to cut the steering shaft and column tube off the steering box. Cut it as far down as you can, and leave it long. You can shorten it when the welding is done. You will have to trim it back the column tube and install a shouldered bearing in the tube to support the shaft. On the naked shaft end, you can either grind two flats, effectively making it a 3/4" DD shaft, or weld on a sleeve that goes from 3/4" round to 3/4" DD. Adaptation from there is easy. At the base of the column in an AD truck ('47-'54), you will find a rubber cover (boot), inside, buy your feet, that has about a 135 degree bend in it, that goes around the column. About half of it is on the firewall, and the other half on the toe board. What I have done is made a metal duplicate of that, out of 1/8" steel, and the column tube through that, and welded it on. A few bolts through the firewall, and it is done. This will support the lower end of the column, which was previously supported by being attached to the old steering box. In every case where I have done this, were the stock steering wheel was retained, I moved the column down, to put the steering wheel farther from the driver. That is up to you, and your comfort. Since you are going with a manual rack, I'd suggest keeping the stock steering wheel. The extra leverage is nice.
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