Lower steering column bearing source?

After a futile search for the lower steering column bearing for my 72 I've been on the lookout for a suitable item. Someone here suggested that I look through hardware store bins. So, caliper in hand I scouted the local Home Depot and found two likely suspects.

Item one was a 1/2" PVC electrical conduit connector. These join two sections of PCVC conduit together. The other item is a 1" nylon barbed hose splicer. Both have the approximate inside and outside dimensions needed.

I don't have a lathe so all my modifications were done on a drill press or by hand in true third world fashion.

I produced one of each material and I got both to fit and seemingly work but I opted to go with the nylon item because I think it will last longer and the remnant of the original bearing appeared to be nylon.

To produce these I found a small sanding drum that has a expanding rubber section that grips a sandpaper drum. I just inserted the drum into the couplings and expanded the drum till it gripped the inside of the couplings. This was the best mandrel I could find. Finding an appropriate mandrel took many hours of scrounging around the shop. I put this in the drill press and used hand files to reduce the outer diameter. I then released the couplings from the drum and used the drum sander function to sand the interior until I had the right dimensions. Obviously, better tools would be a great help.

As you can see in the picture, I cut one side of the barbed connector off and this produced a good lip to retain the bearing in the column. I also cut off the top ring of the connector to (closer) match the original dimensions.

BTW, the PVC coupling cost .48 and the nylon coupling cost $3.18

I hope this works for a while when I get it on the road.

 

Very cool. That's what these Intermediates are all about...fabricate what you can not find.

 

On My 75 I had a local machine shop make me one out of a piece of nylon block. Still working great.

 

I had my tooling guy at work make me one out of some delrin we had laying around. I still need to install it though