The steering shaft can be the Rodney Dangerfield of car components. Just sitting unseen under the dash and just doing it’s job while getting no respect! It is time to give it some attention.
The big job right now is to clean and prep the floorboards for fresh paint in conjunction with replacing the battery tray that is part of the firewall. You can see the tray cavity in the top right.
To scrape and clean old floor boards is dirty, sad, boring and lonely job so to keep the spirit going I take breaks and restore other small components here and there. There will be a report on the floor board action later.
One of many component that could use some attention is the steering column shaft. It has these strange looking bearings in each end. Both of them felt rather crusty and I suppose this is to be expected after 50 some years. They are no longer available so we have to restore them.
First, you have to remove the felt ring on the outside.
Then you remove this snap ring that hold the bearing halves together.
NOTE: make sure you have the whole assembly inside a tray because when you pull the two apart, 22 balls will come flying.
Say after me: Tray=good, floor=bad!
Here are the two halves, basically an inside and outside bearing race.
Assuming the inside is not too rusted or pitted, a little green pad action will get the bearing surface back to new.
How do you hold 22 wayward balls in place when you reassemble? Grease. This is Moly grease, that’s why it is dark.
Here they are, ready for another 50 years of service. The bolts in the background are the hardware for the steering shaft, they will all be zink plated.
The shaft and other brackets under the dash were probably hastily painted without primer when manufactured. I assume most components were made by sub contractors that put in the lowest bid!
Just touching it with a rotating wire brush causes the paint comes right off so I might as well refinish it now.
The wire brush can only do so much, the blaster is helpful cleaning and removing paint and corrosion in intricate corners.
Some etching primer and then gloss enamel and this shaft will outlast me!
And now…for something completely different and a totally Unrelated-Nerdy-Minutia-Vintage-Volvo observation:
The one on the right is from the 1963 Volvo, the left one is from a 1967 Volvo. Note how they went from “LIGHTS” to “LIGHT”. Kinda strange…who made that decision and why? I want to know! They have still more than one light on the car, right?
So, from plural to singular...stay with me here…
The thick plottens! Again, the one on the right is from the 1963 Volvo and the left one is from a 1967 Volvo. Now they went from singular to plural! So did they only have one wiper on the early cars? Of course not.
I am however pleased to announce that they stuck with “FAN” through the years and didn’t arbitrarily change it to “FANS”!
Don’t loose any sleep over this!
Next up: I will replace the weak battery box with a new one and I am NOT going to weld it in.
More later…