Been a member here for awhile but pretty much new here. I'm on PSA most of the time for the PSD's. I have a 88 F250 460 5 speed that needs some work and I have a few questions on parts. The steering column, mine is loose (whole column) and kinda bent from using it as a handle to get in the truck. It's a tilt column with cruise control. Is there a way I can rebuild it or should I look for a junkyard one? Also can an Auto column be retrofitted to work in a manual truck? Next is the firewall issue. Is the fix it plate still available? or is there an outline I can use to make my own? Links would be helpful. Anyways here is a picture of the truck:

 

You can rebuild the column, but whether or not its practical to do would depend on how much work you want to go through, not only the actual labor but also hunting down parts. Since yours is bent and loose I personally think you would be better off getting a decent used one from a jy or from somebody parting one out on Craigslist or somewhere else.

You will prob find this handy as you go: car-part.com

Its a junkyard lookup that can be sorted by price, year, and distance from you.


Here is a good article on the firewall flex repair: Clutch problems due to cracked Firewall? Here's what to do.... PART1

Terrapin manufacturing is linked in the first post, they have the kit for $100 plus shipping.

We were having some slow days at the shop so I decided to make my own plate. It was a pain, and that's in a fairly well equipped shop. I tried printing that first photo in the article listed blown up to the right size. Perspective is an issue so its not quite right but with some adjusting and trimming I finally got close on paper.

Then I copied that onto some light guage sheet metal because the paper really wasn't working out all that well, too flimsy and hard to work with up in the hole, even with the column and master removed. Got the sheet metal template pretty close and transferred it onto a piece of plate.

Cut out the outline and the two extra small plates, clamped them together and drilled the holes, heated the plate in the vise and bent the tabs, cleaned everything up with the grinder. More test fitting, more heating and bending, more grinding (I'll go into that a bit more in a minute). Finally got it to fit well. Bought some nuts and bolts and welded the nuts to the smaller plates. Painted everything.

At this point I'm roughly where I would have been if I'd just bought the kit give or take a little.

I don't do a lot of metal fabrication on a daily basis, but I've done a fair amount over the years and the guy I work with retired from a shipyard where he did a lot of metalwork and we had everything we needed right at hand. There are a couple problems with making this piece, one is the hard to reach tight area, the other is that nothing is really straight or square in the area. I know it looks like it is from the terrapin plate, but it really isn't. Getting the hole that goes around the steering column to line up exactly (Which it has to for the column to fit correctly) and the bend for the trans tunnel to be in the right orientation is the hardest part, the upper bend was relatively easy after that, and the small bend opposite the trans tunnel (extra support) has some flexibility regarding location, but can only be so tall in order to clear the column support.

So, long story short - If I had it to do over again, I'd buy the plate in a heartbeat. Its not impossible to make your own, but it sure felt like more than a hundred bucks worth of effort to do so.