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Column shift rebuild help please

Kart57911

New Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2012
Messages
2
Loc.
Carson City
The 3 speed column shift sleeve on my 69 is barely hanging on, so I bought a new one to replace it. Now I am stumped. My existing (OEM) shifter has a small hole in the sleeve (about .125) with two spring loaded pins sticking out of the shift lever itself to hold it into the sleeve. The new sleeve I received has a much larger hole and a solid steel pin that appears to be designed to press in from the bottom and an even bigger hole (.250) at the top.

Do I have the right part? I ordered the manual sleeve. Do I have to remove the spring pins and drill out my lever to accept the larger pin?

Thanks for the help!!
 

DirtDonk

Contributor
Bronco Guru
Joined
Nov 3, 2003
Messages
47,275
Good question. Don't know, but someone here probably has run into this.
A lot of replacement parts are slightly different from their original counterparts, but sometimes they use a part originally designed for a different car (such as the same vintage Mustang for instance) and it varies for that reason. Other times they just flat out give you the wrong part!

Hope you get it figured out. They're simpler than they seem, but just complex enough to let one small variation mess up the whole thing.
In the meantime, here you are back to the top! Maybe someone will see it again.
Viperwolf1 has a lot of experience with the innards of steering columns. I think anyway.

Good luck.

Paul
 

casadejohnson

Bronco Alchemist
Joined
Jan 21, 2005
Messages
3,587
You have the early style column. My 66 column was like that and my 74 had the roll pin style. I did the same thing you did and ordered a new shift collar for my 66 and had the same problem. I ended up drilling it out for a larger roll pin. The roll pin started to work its way out over time so I ended up putting a small hose clamp on it to hold the pin in place. Not the most aesthetically pleasing solution but it worked until I switched to an Auto transmit ion and column.
 

Fireball05

Bronco Guru
Joined
Oct 7, 2012
Messages
1,822
Guys, I'm bringing this to the top. I've got the 3 speed on the column which is super sloppy. Clutch works really well, but finding 1st gear and neutral can be quite a challenge. OEM power steering setup works well too.

I obviously did a search looking for more information on rebuilding the column, but didn't find a whole lot of good info. There aren't any tech articles on it either.

JBG sells the following kit which looks interesting: http://broncograveyard.com/bronco/i-17011-column-rebuild-kit-man-76-77.html

It also looks like Tom's sells an already rebuilt column for around $400.

Any advice of others experiences with a rebuild would be much appreciated!
 
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