Rapom's Rocket - just another Duster build thread

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had rebuilt my steering column. Kinda sort of. The car was a column shifted auto and I'm going floor shift manual trans. Rather than modifying my original column to delete the shift stuff I went through the effort of purchasing an as advertised, and verified with the East Coast seller, a very nice floor shift power steering column. It was packed away as soon as it arrived as I was dealing with a house sale/move/house search & purchase/new shop build. After starting work on the car it came time to pull the old column out and fit the new. @#$% manual column! After cooling off I sat down and asked some questions, got some responses, and learned something new from my FABO brothers. Seems that the steering column shafts are largely interchangeable so I had everything I needed on hand I just had to put it together. For those of you who don't know, the difference between manual and power columns is a couple of inches length in the steering shaft. The power is shorter due to the larger power steering box.

After my customary research and downloading some illustrations from the FSMs (Factory Service Manuals) I blew the two columns apart and selected the parts to reassemble. Those were cleaned, painted and greased where applicable. Unfortunately the only pic I took is of the lower column parts laid out prior to reassembly. What's missing is the floor shift's upper collar and head assy. Everything went together without a hitch. I also rebuilt the steering coupler with new internals and packed it full of high temp grease. I am awaiting the arrival of my Flaming River coupler and now that I have a few days off I'm going to search for a flanged bearing, ala 72bluNblu, for increased lower column support of the steering shaft.