1966 Skylark Steering re-assembly

**kodamar** · 08-12-2009, 05:14 PM

I recently bought a 1966 Skylark four-door hardtop. The first week I had it in May, I broke the turn signal cancel cam by accidentally holding the turn signal lever as I was straightening the wheel. I heard a loud "PING" sound, and it was history. The turn signals still worked, so I figured I would deal with it later.

Later came a couple of weeks ago when after a left turn the signal lever went flopping down like Santa Claus without Viagra. To make things even more special, (no pun intended) the loose signal lever (which was of course, stuck in the hole) was intermittently completing the circuit for the horn, causing my horn to blare in short bursts as I drove home.

I had an easy enough time disassembling it with a standard wheel puller kit, and discovered that where the lever screws to the cam someone had long ago made a repair with epoxy, which is what had failed.

Got the new cam and went to reassemble it tonight only to have great frustration! On the back of the short column section that holds the switch mechanism is what appears to be a retainer ring with three screw holes that correspond to the holes in the switch unit and in the column section. This ring also has the 'shift' safety cam for the column shifter. (that prevents engaging reverse or park without pulling the lever forward)

When I attempt to attach this piece on the back of the column section and turn assembly, and THEN try to install the whole thing on the column it does not want to go on!

If I try to put the ring in place first, I can't get the screw holes to line up, and I can't get anything behind there to hold the ring in place!

Either way, moving the shift lever causes the whole assembly to kick back out, so it's obviously not correctly seated.

Can the backing ring be installed before putting the entire assembly back on the steering column?

Meanwhile, just by repeatedly moving the shifter back and forth, I've somehow managed to f*** up the PRNDL indicator, which now 'drags' the orange needle noisily on the printed backing and scratching a nice arc into it, causing me to have another huge expense if I don't want it to look like ****...

I can only remember getting into a steering column job twice, and it was both times on a Mopar, but never this difficult.

I'm so disgusted I'm ready to just take a sledge hammer to it, and sell you guys the parts that are left... It can't be any more cruel than "cash for clunkers"...