The U-Joint looking connector at the bottom end of the Intermediate Shaft is bad on my 96 B250. It connects the steering column to the gear box. I am wondering if anyone out there knows where I can get an aftermarket one or just that connector. The dealer wants $350 for the part, comes with the whole shaft, but the rest of the shaft looks brand new, just 1 bad joint.

 

Ha ha, maybe not *quite* in time to help you, but nine years later here's what I found out with my '97 B2500:
- The whole steering intermediate shaft is no longer available, neither dealer nor aftermarket. Don't even bother trying (I wasted half a day online and on the phone).
- The U-joint center piece itself is not available, even if you have a part number, so you can't just press in a new one.
- Borgeson makes a U-joint end unit that will work, but it takes a bit of doing. On my van the two ends of the Borgeson U-joint were 1) 3/4" 30-spline and 2) 1" round.
Steps I took:
- Pulled the whole intermediate shaft from the van, not hard to do. The hardest part was getting the original splined fitting off of the steering gear (took lots of leveraging with a thick screwdriver). Interestingly the other end (connecting to the steering column) just popped right off.
- Removed the existing, bad U-joint from the end of the bottom shaft. Mine was held in place with a pin that I might've eventually been able to hammer out, but a hydraulic press did the trick easily.
- New Borgeson unit from Summit Racing: The only tricks to installing this were 1) sanding down my existing round shaft (removing rust and paint) so that it would fit inside the Borgeson 1" pipe end, then 2) drilling two holes in the Borgeson unit so that a bolt would hold it to the existing shaft. You need to mark the exact spot in order to align the steering wheel to the front wheels. In my case I test-fit everything back into the van, then made alignment marks for where the holes needed to be drilled.
- Drilling the Borgeson went fairly fast, I just used a center punch to mark the exact spots and then did a sequence of drills, starting with 1/4". Unit was held in a vice. I drilled mine out to 3/8", put in a stainless 3/8" bolt and nut.
Note: the original U-joint unit was 5" long, and the Borgeson replacement is 3.5" long, but this didn't make any difference as there's plenty of extension available in the existing shaft.