I want to go to a shorter steering column with tilt in my 68 f250.
What's the good and bad? High dollar or junk! Anything in-between?

 

You'll have to wait for Steve to chime in as he's done it an can fill you in on it.
Orich

 

My truck originally had manual steering with the stock fixed steering column for an automatic transmission. I installed a tilt wheel column that came from a '78 F150.

1978 and 1979 were the only two years in the Dentside era these columns were available and they were optionally available in the trucks, vans and Broncos. I believe the tilts in the vans possibly had longer column tubes and shafts, compared to the trucks or Broncos.

 

I have the tilt column from a 79 F150 in mine. It's not short though.

 

ultraranger did that column "bolt" in or was there any fab. work .? the last f100 that i had years ago there seemed to be more room between the steering wheel and me. now not so much. some how the cab on my 67 has got smaller. thanks for any help with this.

 

The only thing I had to modify was the column TSS connection to the underdash wiring. I made a plug-in (patch) cable to go between the column connector to the two connectors coming off the '69 main wiring harness so that none of the wiring harness was butchered up. Other than this, it was a direct bolt up to the underside of the dash and to the Saginaw PS gearbox I installed.

....well, that's not totally true. When I got my column, it was missing the bolted clamp/flange at the lower end of the shaft. With this part missing, I had no means of coupling to the rag joint.

Needed bolted flange shown here --the piece my column was missing.



I decided to completely do away with the rag joint and I installed a Borgeson stainless steel steering joint (3/4"-36 spline x 3/4"-36 spline).

The joint is at an angle here because at the time I took this photo, I didn't have the column bolted to the underside of the dash and I was just getting the column/steering joint into position before tightening everything up.

 

I did the same as Steve. 78 tilt column. I removed the wire pins and relocated them to the 69 harness plug. BUT I could never figure out the emergency flasher part so it remains in the glove box.

 

Best I can remember, the e-flasher is controlled off the white wire with red stripe. My switch is still located in the glove box. Someday, I'll run the wire from the column in parallel with the glove box switch and the flashers would be able to be activated either from the glove box or off the switch on the side of the tilt column.

 

I've also done a tilt swap and used the 69 blinker switch so I didn't have to mess with the wiring. I just left one screw out of the plastic ring so the tilt rod would flex the plastic.

 

I installed a new TSS for the tilt. Up through '77, the TSS only has one horn contact wire. In '78, they started putting two horn contacts on the TSS switch (tilt or non-tilt). I used one of the contacts for my horn and the other contact will be used to make the cruise control switches functional by sending the signals to the CC module, after I swap engines and install the CC module and servo. --The CC module and servo I have are from a 1990 Mustang GT.

 

Tilt wheel introduced in 1978 F100/350, Bronco & Econoline. Available with A/T & 4 M/T, not available with 3 M/T

Some of the tilt wheel parts are getting very hard to find.
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1975/77: Three different T/S switches: With Speed Control, with M/T, with A/T

1978/79: Three different T/S switches: With tilt wheel, with A/T, with M/T
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1978/79's with Speed Control: Horn relay plugs into the Speed Controls amplifier.

No Speed Control, no horn relay.