Hi everybody,
I have a little bit of a situation. I was in the process of replacing my steering rack, steering shaft, and steering column bushing today and everything was going well until I had to pull the steering wheel from inside the car to clear the firewall in order to install the new column bushing.
Everywhere I read states that the funky mesh cage on the outside will stay put and the inner shaft will slide back when you pull it, therefore clearing the firewall and letting you install a new bushing. For the life of me, I couldn't get the inner shaft to budge at all. Nothing was moving. So I started taking my steering wheel and pulling it back sharply several times. With each tug and pull, the inner shaft started to come out towards the driver's seat and that cleared it enough to let me do my thing with the bushing.
Re-installation has been another thing. Now the inner shaft is flush against the mesh cage and I can't get it to go back out. In fact, I can't even see where it was sliding in the first place. I removed the entire steering column to see if that would help me figure things out with it out of the car, but I'm still puzzled.
Anyone have any insight?
Thanks in advance!
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