All done.

The steering feels about the same, but the extremely annoying repetitive clunking during slow speed corners is gone. I think I can feel a little bit of extra vibration without the vibration dampener, but only at low speeds on sharp corners. Not bad at all.

New shaft and joints.


Old shaft out. I consider an air hammer pretty fricken necessary for this job.



Lot of extra metal there!


Shortened and built. Basically to build the shaft you need a 5/16" drill bit and really you should have it in a drill press. You need to make a few depressions for the set screws to bite into, then one fully drilled hole on the 1" DD end for the lower joint's bolt and nut. The metal is pretty easy to drill through with decent quality all purpose bits. Like butter with my Milwaukee metal bits.





Like I said, I broke a little bit of the preload spring between the firewall and the upper u-joint. The part that broke is the lower end where it coils into a nice flat end to butt up against the end of the u joint. Without that flat end it just sat really crooked on the end of the u joint.

The spring applies pressure to the lower bushing. Without it the whole thing would be loose as hell. Can't do without it. So I found this in my parts box. I don't know where it came from or what it is. Drilled out the hole big enough to fit over the main steering shaft, and it provided a nice base for the bottom of the spring.



Yeah, hole is a bit off center. Don't care.




Greased up the bottom of the main shaft a bit.



Compressed the spring in a vice (eye protection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)



Zip tied it short. Had to cut a few zip ties to slide it all the way onto the shaft.



Install the shaft, cut the zip ties and boom. Good as new. Meh.



That's all she wrote.

 

Just wondering if you guys that replaced this had excessive play/looseness in the steering wheel? I can turn my steering wheel close to 2 inches before the wheels start to move. My steering shaft definitely has some play in it. I haven't had a chance to take a look at it yet but I'm wondering if my issue might be due to a bad pitman arm.

 

You'll need to have someone else crank back and forth on the wheel so you can see where it is, and is not, turning.

Before the pitman arm, I'd go for play in the gear box; however, there's also the joints in the intermediate shaft that can cause play like this.

RwP

 

I could feel the looseness of the u joints through the steering wheel but it really didn't affect the steering responsiveness so much...it just knocked all the time. Still could be the shaft if it's really bad. I'd check to make sure all tie rods are good, pitman and idler arm good. If it's the shaft joints I think it'd be obvious because they would be REALLY bad. I'll go along with Ralph and say that after checking all the simple stuff, I'd suspect the box.

 

Nice job, it looks great! My steering column is different, I don't have the large spring there, at least from memory I don't. I'll look next time I'm under the hood.

For me, yes it did delete the excessive play in my system, but I diagnosed it down to that component, so I knew it was my problem.

 

It's weird, it seems like there are many different versions of steering column systems in these trucks. Maybe yours runs on roller bearings or something...oh you probably have tilt steering maybe? Mine is static. That might account for a difference for some reason.

 

There's three different columns in the 1988; non-tilt, manual tilt, power tilt. Parts are a bit different, and the bottom design is different between them.

That's probably it.

RwP

 

I do have a tilt steering column, that is probably the reason for the differences.

Unfortunately, due to a mysterious transmission leak, I have had the truck down for a few weeks, as I am slowing replacing seals and gaskets; so I haven't driven the truck much to see how the new replacement intermediate shaft works.

 

I have a 93 3.9 4 wd that I also just had the whole shaft replaced with borgeson parts.

what is the purpose of the spring up by the firewall? Mine is loose and you can turn it by hand. The shop that did it did an awesome job, steers great, but they aren't sure what the purpose of the spring is. Is it necessary to have it? There is slight play up by the firewall

​​​​​​​any help or suggestions would be appreciated

 

I had mine replaced a few months ago, I noticed that the spring up by the firewall moves freely, should it have tension on the shaft? Is it required ?