I'm replacing the shift collar in a 1970 2wd F-100 3 spd manual. I've got the steering wheel off. Now I'm having trouble getting the shift collar off because of the wiring harnass that feeds up through the collar to the horn and turn signals. To me, it looks like you could maybe disconnect the wires from their socket at the bottom end and pull them up through. It looks like you could also "hack" by cutting the wires and re-splice

Can anyone give me some pointers on how to get this thing off correctly?

Thanks a bunch,
Jeff

 

I recently had to do work in the same area. You probably will want to disconnect the wires at the sockets and pull them through the collar. Splicing could be done but you take the risk of making it look tacky and coming loose in the future.
Hope this helps.

Rob

1970 Ford F-100 Ranger

 

It looks like I can disconnect the pins at the end of the harnass from the connector block under the instrument panel. I'm going to try connecting a piece of copper wire and then pull them out through the top - then use the wire to pull them back down, in the same fasion as running wire with a fish through conduit.
I hope my wire doesn't come off, it looks like it would be hard to poke that harnass back down the column.

 

Posting how I removed for future reference...

1) disconnected wiring harnass under the dash from the connector block by pushing the pins out of the block.

2) I used electrical tape to wrap a piece of 14 gauge solid core wire to the 7 wires in the harnass.

3) lubed up the tape joint with grease as its a tight fit back up the column.

4) pulled the steering column upper flange with the turn signal switch attached up through the column and then removed the tape joint. Using a reverse of the same procedure you can fish the harnass back down through the column.

-Jeff