96+ steering shafts

[Blind]

I think I'm gonna try to drill 4 new holes on the same disc, have a junkyard lower shaft in the vice now and the holes for the rivets are what wore out. The holes are stretched. I'm gonna drill new holes in the old disc and use bigger bolts and tighten it up with a impact and see where it goes from there

that's just going to make it extremely weak, if you feel like drilling something at least use a brand new hockey puck to do that

 

[great white]

You also can't get bolts to properly tighten over a rubber component. You need shouldered studs.

Problem is as time goes on the rubber relaxes and the nuts loosen. Lock washers, locktight, etc won't fix the fact that you can't get proper torque on them.

There's a paper about this very issue and replacement rag joint hardware by a gm engineer steering specialist on the web somewhere. He does corvettes, but same same for the flex joint.

There are a couple different kits available from a couple different manufacturers.

Just order the proper kit and be done with it for another 15 years...

 

[Nca2013]

i found a disc thats close enough to the factory size to modify a little and use. Ill try to get some pics tonight or tomorrow. thanks for all the input, been rushing because im moving to PA next week for school.

 

[Nca2013]

Dorman part number is 31002. It's not listed as fitting the truck but the rubber is the same size