Cool McCool's Garage

So, since I’m not “settling”, yesterday when I went out to work on the truck, the first thing I thought was, “Why did I mount the base of the steering column that way?”

I’d used the bottom of the van column’s bearing and mount, just because that was the way I’d had the van column mounted. It had two “ears”, and I’d made a heavy bracket to bolt those to. It was clumsy looking, and would have made the hole in the firewall hard to seal, and hard to trim or carpet around. In addition, the column was actually a little bit too short.

I pulled the column back out, cut the jacket off, cut the inner shaft off, lengthened them both 3″ in order to get the column itself through the firewall and into the engine bay.

The new floor mount is simply a 6×6 piece of 18 ga. with a hole cut in it for the jacket to pass through, which I hammered a flare into, at an angle, which fits (more or less) precisely the jacket. This is welded to the column, and is in turn bolted to the floor and firewall.

The result is a tight-fitting, very strong lower column mount that’ll be easy to seal and to trim. I also shoved the column down about an inch and a half, moving the steering wheel closer to the dash. Much more comfortable than the “wheel in the chest” position of the original.

That part went well, but I did manage to break the little “tangs” off the inside of the steering wheel which hold the  horn button on.  I though I had it rotated around far enough to pop out, but NOOOO.  So, I have to fix that.  The  new horn button, an original that never had the original owners name engraved in it, does look pretty cool, well worth having to fix my minor gaffe.

Todays project is to pull the new engine/trans, and cut some notches in the front crossmember for the motor mounts.  I have to do this as the stock LS1 ‘Vette style mounts have a very thick oil filled biscuit, which has to have a level base, and the crossmember is angled.   So, that’s the plan.

More news as it happens.