Week 2 of owning my 83' Bronco, taking an assessment of what needs to be addressed and in what order. Someone in the past has put the steering wheel on upside down/out of index.

The main issue, and a safety concern is the entire wheel at the mount will move up and down. I looked through the workshop manual, I see a few places where this can occur, was hoping maybe this is common, the board could offer up some specific components to inspect.

The truck is stock suspension, no lift, 31" tires.

 

See if you have tilt wheel - push the turn signal lever forward and see if the wheel will tilt up and down....

 

Yes it has tilt, seems the play is in the lower portion of the Upper Flange, right before the shift mechanism. It will move at an angle up/down side to side.

 

Probably a broken collar caused by PO grabbing the wheel to assist getting in. Be sitting down if you price a new one..and...the tilt mechanism can be tricky to work on.

 

Which piece is it on page 118 of the LMC catalog? Item 14, left side "With Tilt"?
Truck Parts and Truck Accessories

 

It's been while since we did mine..but I think it was 14 or 15..Probably why I remember the cost. Do a search too..it has been discussed...

 

I used Advanced search function for 79-95 Brono and Bullnose, though I would think it would be Bronco centric due to height, I also called Boneyard to see if they were familiar with the issue, though acknowledged, no real direction, my fear is starting from the top, not being able to patch repair until I can get the correct part due to said component completely failing when disassembling, or over ordering parts and getting stuck with them.


If anyone is familiar with any of these threads mentioned above please share. This site is a great wealth of information, not so easy to navigate the archives. I have had over 30 cars, using forums since 1998, I work in tech support, I know my way around web search. Maybe it's due to the 79-95 production expanse, that I do not fully know.

I tried searching "loose steering wheel" "wobbly" etc, I do not see a mention of the common issue of people using the wheel to get in the vehicle, and what exact components to test/replace. Forgive me if I indeed overlooked.

 

Yeah, the search thing here isn't real good... using Advanced Search, putting terms with spaces in them in quotes, and sorting the output based on Relevance seems to help but it's still nowhere near as good as Google (who has spoiled us).

This column issue doesn't come up *real* often, and people use all kinds of terms to describe their symptoms... so researching this is gonna be kinda hard, I agree.

I'd think it'd be easier, faster and cheaper to just get an entire replacement column from a junk yard... there are differences in manual transmission versus automatic, and tilt vs non-tilt columns. The parts catalog says to look in MY 1980 thru Sept. 1988 pickups & Broncos... IOW Model Year 1980 through a build date of September, 1988 for the column.

There are turn signal switch wiring differences amongst the years (key-in-ignition buzzer added post-82 or so, parking-brake-pedal-illuminated dash BRAKE light came about in 1984 or so, etc.) but the physical stuff is the same.

A Bronco is just an F150 from the front bumper to just behind the front seats....

 

Excellent feedback, thank you for the reply.
I'll also try the old trusty (topic site:www.ford-trucks.com) in Google.