Hey all so my steering wheel tilt has been loose for a LONG time, and it was just annoying that it jiggled a little up and down. Well last night I get into to drive the car and I'm reversing out of driveway and my steering wheel just plopped down and is now COMPLETELY loose, up down and left and right!! It moves insanely now and it makes the car VERY difficult to drive. The steering wheel has no where to lock up/hold it self against so now when you go to turn the car you gotta actually use forearm muscle to turn it. Did the tilt bolts just fall out? Or is this something completely different. I'm planning on ripping through my steering column after work but if this is not fixable I need to know!!

Thanks all

EDIT: it also made turning the key back to take it out very rough and the key came out rough as well.

 

Look here:
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/susp...-steering.html

Parts and more pics here:
http://www.steeringcolumnservices.com/

 

Just wanted to update this thread for future reference for anyone who had their tilt steering already loose and then the steering wheel became 'off' or VERY loose. I ended up ripping apart my steering column and found that all 4 of my tilt bolts were completely out just sitting there!!! I loctited them one by one and now my car feels better than ever!!

 

Indeed!!!

I had a friend with about a 87 truck (same column...) who was driving along one day, and the whole wheel and everything literally dropped off and landed in his lap. Exactly the same deal.

Thank you, old GM.

I hope all of the engineers responsible for that design in the 60s (yes, it goes back that far) spend their eternity in Hell driving around at top speed on really curvy dangerous canyon-type roads, you guys that live out West know what I mean where you look down acouplathousand feet on one side and up acouplathousand more on the other, with those columns just before they fall off like that.