81 F100 Loose Steering Wheel

[TM800SRR]

The steering wheel on my 81 F100 has a lot of up and down play in it. Any suggestions as how to fix this?????

[BigBrother-84]

Hi, just to make sure, there is no loose in the direction while turning the steering, but up and down movement on the column?

[TM800SRR]

Yes. That’s correct.

[BigBrother-84]

Some humorous friends here would answer this is normal behaviour for a tilt steering column.  But I am not one of them.


More seriously, before I changed the lower part of Big Brother's column, I had that kind of trouble.  That truck never saw asphalted roads, he grown in a wild country with gravel roads, riding them never slower than 40mph, mostly 50 and over.  No need to say there were some loose parts...

The column is bolted under the dash, and goes through the firewall, but this isn't all it needs to be "solid".  If the joints below are loose, the steering can go up and down.

With someone in the truck, moving up and down the steering, take a look at the column, under the hood.  Won't be surprised if you find some movements at the shaft jonctions.

[Gsmblue]

If you look at the projects page and the “Fixing Eddie” thread, there is a great part in there about how to fix this.

Actually, read the thread anyway, Stein (Fire Fire is his username I think) posts a lot of great workings and stuff.

Found it!


https://forum.garysgaragemahal.com/Fixing-Eddie-tp84683p99181.html

[BigBrother-84]

Well, I was joking about the tilt steering columns flipping up and down, specially 'cause I thought that yours is not, and is a straight column model.

Am I wrong?


Anyway, mine is not a tilt model, and had some loose parts that made the steering going up and down.  So I will detail here what was my problem.
Hope this can help you.

Here is a short movie showing the loose I had:
https://youtu.be/u_VPsr91hw0

Here are two diagrams about the straight column model.

This is where the column is bolted under the dash:



This is the lower column diagram.
The telescopic section had some loose parts, but my "tilt problem" came mostly from the red circled U-joint:







Here are some pictures showing the column dismantling.









I was lucky to find a brand new OEM lower column section for sale:





Here is the new telescopic section installed to the column.  You can see that the U-joint is "open" and not in a metallic cover.  But it doesn't matter, this is the only difference with my original one.
No more loose parts, nor up and down movement in my steering!