Maybe I'm spoiled...

I have been a professional automotive technician for 22 years. I worked for GM dealerships and have been with Mopar the last decade. All the vehicles I have worked on, the dashes come apart as an entire unit and have large connectors to separate the dash wiring that snakes through the dash frame from the rest of the body harness so you can pull the entire thing out. The steering columns are simple, and easy to take apart and replace. Window regulators are also smooth in operation and in removal and replacement.

Our cars are the absolute opposite. I fought putting the dash back in for hours and ended up cutting the right side rear speaker wire in order to separate the harness on at LEAST the right side so I can snake the wiring in between the dash frame and HVAC box that has to be bolted up to the dash before putting it in. I have massive bear paws for hands and they do NOT lend themselves well to these types of jobs...

I went to rebuild my steering column as well as I have worn pivot pins and I have the column from my 1992 Convertible Firebird I parted out years ago. So I was going to take them both apart and make one good column from two broken ones. (the 1992 column had broken ignition lock and plastic from an attempted vehicle theft but has good pivot pins) and I just CANNOT get the damn high beam switch to work properly... I suspect the rod is not bent properly and I am tweaking it trying to get it to work adequately when it is all assembled. But that requires me to disassemble it and reassemble it partially every time I try it...

This is the part of these cars I DESPISE.

I'd love to find some sort of aftermarket column that fits our cars correctly. I already have VATS bypassed (Aftermarket ECM and Starter relay bypassed) so I literally have no need to run the OE steering column.

 

Yep. I like thirdgens, but they're low-quality cars...

 

Yup. It's just something you accept when you get into them.

Kind of like electrical gremlins and British sports cars

 

I feel you... our cars are built cheap... but the guy who designed this "closed style" steering column must have been a rocket scientist or something else. I've been a mechanic for about 15 years and have never seen anything else that can compete to our steering columns. Over the last 17 years I am working on 3rd gens I have torn apart these columns multiple times and I know how to work on them by now. But everytime I do I think by myself "Just why???".

 

Thirdgens really aren't that bad. Both of my daily driver's are worse in different ways. Working on my Explorer or my Mustang makes me appreciate my thirdgens that much more.

 

I think the same thing! I rods to go down to the actual high beam and ignition switch baffle me. I mean, as far as the goals of my car which is a resto-mod/Pro Touring style build, I want to improve on all these terrible engineering choices made back then so once I can research which modern steering columns work in our cars, I'm doing it. ****, I'm tempted to redo the entire electrical system and use a CAN bus style system with some aftermarket ECUs to control everything because its what I know and I like the advantages these modern systems have.

 

Easy with that thinking, man! One of the things I really like about our cars is that the electrical system is SIMPLE. Take our windows and locks: it's just a simple switch and wires; you can add a relay if you want better performance.

But on a modern car, you've got a computer for each door to control that stuff. Have you ever had the window stop working on one door, and it turns out that the issue is actually a control module on a DIFFERENT door? I have.

As far as the dash boards go, cars in general designed prior to the mid '90s had to come out piece by piece; for whatever reason, the engineers just hadn't had the though about a modular dash board. I'm really curious to see how they put them in at the factory, where the amount of time on the assembly line was a big factor.

Question: Has anyone here ever reinforced the dashboard on one of these cars? The way they attach, they are just kind of hanging off the top of the cowl/ firewall with some supports on the sides. There isn't much supporting it in the middle.
When traveling at high speeds on moderately uneven pavement, my dash board would visibly shake around. I always wondered if there was some way that I could add some struts/ bracing somewhere to strengthen it up.

 

I rebuilt the steering column a few days ago because of worn pivot pins and a failed inspection.
I started inside the car but after a while I got the whole column out of the car.
From that point it was easy to rebuilt it. A friend made bigger sized pivot pins and drilled the holes out to get a tight fit.
now the steering feels like a new one.
Overall it was a simple job. That is what I like on these cars. Overall simple but sometimes cheap engeneering

 

My Firebird has a metal brace in the center that spans from top of firewall to the big metal dash support rail in the center. It barely squeezes between the HVAC box and the dash. It supports the metal rail but also has a rubber pad that presses on the back of the plastic dash. It's easy to not know where that part goes if you walk up to a stack of parts and didn't see it come apart.