been working on my '55 today, slowly but surely turning it into a decent car. Had JP order me a new top bearing for the steering column, installed that along with the detent spring and ball bearing for the shifter (was missing previously.) Steering column is nice and tight now! Shifter has nice clicky detents too, no more sloppiness. Unfortunately this now shows up the slop in the lever where the roll pin has worn the pot metal casting, but that sounds like another project for later, after I've fixed everything else on the car :)
Put the whole steering linkage loosely back together, had about 1" of play at the rim of the steering wheel. Most of it appeared to be from the center pivot. I took it apart again, pin mic'd right at 1.000" so that is not the problem (within .001 of a NOS one) but it did have a little end play so I switched some washers around to get it right. Probably had about .015": end play before. I now have about 3/4" play at the rim but JP is underneath the Avanti so I'll have to wait for him to crawl out again to check and see whether that's something I can do something about.
Two questions:
how much play in the steering can I reasonably expect to have? I know it will be greater than zero, but let's say I'm test driving a hypothetical zero mile Studebaker, how much would it have?
Also, that little upper bearing on the steering column, should it be lubed in any way? It appeared to be leather with some kind of dry lube on it, not sure if I should let some oil run down the column or not.
nate