Hey there! New to 3rd gens. I recently purchased an 88 Firebird to restore, and I'm starting with the steering column but running into some difficulty.

The previous idiot who owned it tore apart the steering column to start it because they lost the key. I don't think they put it back together correctly because there's a lot of play and movement in all aspects of the column from the steering wheel downward.

Anyway, I'm trying to remove the steering wheel and I cannot get the wheel nut to budge from its place. I don't see any signs of the snapring being present, but as previously mentioned I don't think this was reassembled even close to correctly. Can anyone point out to me what I might be missing? Additionally, if anyone's got a clear picture of how this should look, I would appreciate it.

The steering wheel is the non-airbag, non-radio control version. I've included a pic of the rest of the column to show more of what the previous owner did to it.