Hi everybody. I recently took my 84 Trans Am to my mechanic to have him tighten up the steering column as there was significant play & movement of the steering wheel. He tightened everything up but now the steering wheel is slightly off center. What is puzzling to me was that the mechanic charged me for four hours of labor for this job. After looking at the video below, I feel like I might have been overcharged. Just looking for your thoughts on the situation--wanted to give the mechanic benefit of the doubt that it may have taken him four hours to do the job if he ran into issues. It may have taken me over 4 hours to do the job myself but I dont have a steering wheel puller or the time. Thanks in advance, Bob

They usually just charge what a standard repair time is listed in one of the estimating manuals/programs. It may not have taken him that long to do, but you're paying for experience.

If the wheel is not centered he may have gotten the spline rotation back on the wheel correct. It is possible to go 1-3 spline count position and everything still work when you put the wheel back on. That you should go back and say the wheel is not centered correctly and he should rectify under the original repair.

3-4 hours is probably right if you do it the correct way. If you do it the way the guy in the video does it, you can't get to all of the bolts. It's been a long time since I did this repair, but I believe there are 4 bolts and you can only get to 3 without tearing the column down further. Or, it's 3 bolts and you can only get to 2. In any case, there is one bolt that can't be tightened without taking it apart.

The correct way is to take out everything as shown in this video, plus the lock cylinder, tilt lever, disconnect the wiring at the base of the column, slide the turn signal mechanism wiring out further (but not all the way) and take off the outer case (where the lock cylinder goes). Then remove the tilt spring and use the special GM tool to pull the 2 tilt pivot pins and split the tilt mechanism in two pieces. Then you can tighten all of the bolts and loctite them and put everything back together.

Good advise here,.......

Start watching @ 10:25 on that video.

You can't access all the bolts that cause the 'tilt wobble' in a Thirdgen column without that tool. Obviously; those few extra steps requires a more time to complete. 4 hours seems a little steep, but it's a business that's probably charging based on a pre-defined rate for that job. He could short-cut the job and only tighten the "easy access" loose bolts and the column would feel perfectly good to you and only take him 1/3rd the time to complete,.... but that's what a HACKER garage would do.

Steering wheel position shouldn't have changed. Pretty sure your 84 has a separate Steering Wheel and Hub. He might have re-installed the Wheel itself on the Hub incorrectly. I doubt he turned the wheel while repairing the column and the hub itself only installs 1 way properly. ) If he separated the wheel from the hub, he might have just installed it off a notch.

Thank you all for your responses. Really appreciate it. I did watch the vid and can see what you are saying about tearing down that column even further to get to those bolts inside--it is pretty big job. The wheel does seem just a hair off but enough to annoy the crap out of me while driving. I am going to bring the car back next week and he is going to fix it so it is straight. The mechanic has been great. Just wasn't sure about this job since it was almost $400. He gives a 2 year, 24K mile warranty on all parts & labor so overall I recommend this place.

After rebuilding mine myself, I would have gladly payed the $400 lol!

I recently did this repair myself using several of these video's. I went all the way with the special tool to get the pivot pins out as well to tighten all four bolts.
Being not a trained mechanic it was a bit frightening but definitely doable with the correct tools (a puller for the steering wheel and the pivot pin removal tool).
All in all it took me about 8 hours start to finish. But like i said; i am not a trained mechanic.

The problem I have is that if I try to pull myself ahead in the seat while holding on to the wheel, the tilt easily ratchets down to the bottom. Is this something I can easily fix without going through all the above procedure, or should I just leave it alone?

Book time to overhaul a column is 3.2 hours. I've done over 200 of them and I can do it in about 55 minutes. There's 4 bolts and you must pull the tilt pins to get them all. If the wheel isn't centered, he didn't get it back in the same spot on the splines. Just a matter of popping the wheel back off and moving it.

I completely rebuilt my tilt column with OE GM parts. It took about 4 hours to completely disassemble and reassemble.

The main issue I had was that the pin removal tools I used broke and I had to extract the threaded portion from the driver's side pin twice. The first tool was a cheap one from the parts store and the second was a Snap On. The Snap On replacement tool did the trick though.

I've done this more times than I want to remember - seems like every couple years I have to do it on one or another car. it always takes me longer going back and forth for another tool start with a handful and end up with the floorboard covered Ugh I hate them the last one I did was late 70's steering column - complete disassembly for painting got it back together and ended up with 2 extra parts - Double Farts! only thing pleasurable is the end result a tight column.
Oh and I would think 2 hours would be sufficient to bill a client