Hey guys. My steering colomn is getting loose at the tilt end. It got bad very quickly, I think it has 3/4" play. What do I do?

 

It's a pain in the ***. You've got to tear the column down all the way to the tilt joint. There you'll find 4 torx bolts that have come loose. You need to tighten them back up. Using some thread lock wouldn't be a bad idea unless you really like taking your column apart every 3 months. There's a post on thirdgen.org that pretty much gets you through it (at least it got me through it), so I'm not going to do the play-by-play here, but the long and the short is this:

Pull the wheel.
Remove the retaining ring that holds the column lock on.
Remove turn signal business
Remove ignition
Unplug wires at base of column
Remove pins in the side of the column (you'll need a slide hammer)
Remove tilt spring
Pull entire assmembly out of the way

By this point you should be able to see 2 or 3 of the 4 bolts that you need to tighten. I think I had to work the tilt around to get to all 4 of them.

Check thirdgen.org though. There was a thread full of pictures that I found pretty helpful.

 

That went wrong on my car when i got it, VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM, cause the car will shut off for some reason, when it gets bad.. Just pull the whole colum down till youi get to those four bolts.. I used loktite on them so that I didn't have to do it again.. What a pain.. You must have the pin puller to get these little pins out. this thing screws in and you have to pull the pins out.. This is a special tool.. I had to get mine from a matco tool guy.. .. COme to think about it I still haven't gotten my high beam low beam rod back in correct.. what a pain it was..

Kevin

 

Great. I am so looking forward to this.

 

You don't necessarily need that special tool. I had a slide hammer handy and just rigged up a thing to hold the bolt of the proper thread.