[Andre]

What does the end user use for a steering shaft? The one in the picture seemed very short.

['ol Pinion head]

Originally Posted by Andre

What does the end user use for a steering shaft? The one in the picture seemed very short.

EXACTLY, the above listed tilt column is a "universal" for choice of better words, column shift tilt. Made in China, just a few years ago, avail through Alibaba for a little over a $100. Yes, I've examined one.

If one examines the limited pic & illustrations, there is no shaft that extends down over 12" to a splined end, and to which one of the cast steel bolt on flanges then attaches to the ragjoint. On a straight column (non tilt) the "64-66 A-body columns all used a welded on steel flange to attach to the ragjoint.

The small diam splined shaft on the above Chinese tilt column ends right after the end of the lower bearing retainer & the outer column tube. That will not work.

The illustration shows basically a knockoff of a '73-81 Chevy van tilt. Through the late '80's. 90's. and up into the 00's, I literally pulled near 200 of these as tilt cores to use to help build early GM tilts & '70-72 Chevy pickup tilt columns. Another interesting telltale on the cheap Chinese tilt column, note the spotwelded on thin tabs & the long ribbon style wiring connector. That style plug were not used on '63-68 GM (Saginaw) tilt columns. The early Saginaw tilt columns used a half moon shaped brown plug to attach to the dash harness. In the late '70's Packard Bell (GM) came out with a replacement turn signal switch for this style column which ended with a long flat plug. That plug could then be ziptied under the dash to the outer tube on many early tilt columns, as well as straight columns of that era. Into this flat plug went a near 10" long adaptor harness that converted over to a brown half moon shaped plug. Professional column builders did not use that such rinky dink new GM turn signal switch. Instead they bought the correct early turn signal harnesses in bulk, w/o any plug, then crimped the correct contacts onto each wire, then inserted them into the correct new halfmoon shaped brown plug. Again all sourced from GM's wiring division.