Thread: Project $ 3 K Is Underway

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This weekend I worked on the steering column upper and lower supports, and pretty well got those done. I fabbed up the upper mount out of some 1/4 inch steel strap 1 inch wide, and bent it into an upside down "A." I needed some sort of bearing surface for the 3/4 inch steering shaft to ride in, so I headed off to Lowes and went through everything they had in the hardware dept and finally found what I needed in the plumbing dept. The part I bought was a 3/4 inch brass fitting because I don't want the steel shaft to turn inside more steel, so I figure the brass will act as a bushing. After I ran a 3/4 inch drill bit through it some of the threads were still left, and that is ok. Those will act to hold in a small amount of lithium grease just to add a little more wear resistance to the setup.

Then I needed some sort of outer steel tube to put the brass bushing into, and finally dug around in my spare socket drawer and found that a 7/8 deep well socket slipped right over the brass fitting. I hated to sacrafice a Craftsman socket, but it was going to a good cause. So I chucked the socket into the bandsaw and cut off the same length as the bushing. Then I ground off the chrome finish so I could weld it to the new column support. After that I welded a steel plate to the top of the hoop so I could bolt it to my cowl roll bar assembly. I had planned to put a faceplate on the column support to hold my turn signal switch and tach, but it looked so good left open that I am going to put those items elsewhere.

Here are a couple of pictures of the parts I used and the finished support.