I have an 94 F250 XL with 5.8 motor, with auto tranny with overdrive. 250K + mileage.

I'm trying remove the steering wheel (no air bag) to find out where is movement of 1" side to side and up and down is at. I do not have tilt wheel. I can steer with no problem, but this is an issue. Is the entire steering column "broke", or just the shaft? Because when I remove horn cover, I can see the steering wheel "pivoting". Something is broke. And I can't figure it out. So I need direction on troubleshooting this issue.

 

Sounds more like a colum mount broke then the steering shaft itself. Thats one of those deals where it may be easier and quicker to look up under the knee bolster. Its easy to remove as there are 2 10mm bolts at the bottom of the bolster, then pull directly towards the truck seat, and the pins should unlock. Then you can get a look!

 

It all sounds like you may have lost your ***** out thier races.
There are two ball bearings in the column.

 

So if I'm missing two ball bearings, then how do I replace and repair? Where do I go to get parts to fix. Please advise.

Q in Sac

 

I just lost the top bearing in my column. The symptons were the same as you said, side to side (not the steering box) was good but it just floated top to bottom/back and forth. It broke the horn button/cruize control ring. What I did (maybe not what I HAD to do), is go pull a whole column out of a bronco someone was parting out and swap them. It was not too technical, and it works great now. There are 4 bolts that hold it to the dash, about 3 wiring harneses to unplug (turn signal, ignition switch, ect.), the shifting lever, and the steering shaft down by the firewall. When it was all over I had spent about 4 hours (not including the time to drive to get the parts. My weakness was that I let it intimidate me because I had never done stearing column stuff before, and I was worried that I would get in to the middle of it and get stumped and have the truck imovable in my driveway. If you look around you may be able to get a tilt wheel (if you want to), I think they should be the same on the mounting points. For what it's worth it did take me some time to find a good part, every junkyard truck had the column removed, I think it's a common problem.

 

Oh ya, look at LMC truck, they had a part # listed for the bearings. They even have an exploded diagram of steering wheel parts so you can see what should be there.