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...seeing a few other issues caused me to go into a 'rebuilt' mid 70s tilt tele steering column I was prepping to retrofit into a 71. As I've been reading here and seeing in videos - my column is indeed welded where the inner and outer slide joint is - making it non-collapsible.
There are 4 tiny holes there. 1 shows excess white plastic or nylon bleeding thru, the other 3 do not.
I can leave it as-is and otherwise complete the rebuild. Obviously I'm down a safety feature.
Or I can grind off the welds... But my concern here is that I don't know why it was welded. And If the nylon or plastic inserts at the collapsible joint are damaged, missing, etc. I don't think they are serviceable. Could that leave me with sloppy or clunky steering...
HI pgtr-i just went threw the same thing and learned a lot first they welded the shaft because the column Collapsible at some time and they did the next best thing so its safe if they weld it at the correct length it ok you will never find another one and if you send it out it will come back worse and if your blinkers come on and off when driving the car then leave it alone it still will collapse bob
Welded Steering Rod Dilemma
