detach steering gear from intermediate shaft?

'07 Cobalt, electric power steering.

Steering rack is failing. To remove it, the pinion input shaft has to be disconnected from the universal joint that's at the end of the intermediate shaft. On this car, the u-joint has a sleeve that fits over the end of the pinion shaft, locked with a pinch bolt. [1]

The (Alldata) service manual (and everywhere else) just says to remove the pinch bolt and take the sleeve off the pinion shaft. That second part is not going well. I've tried driving a long chisel from below into the pinch slot, and gottten it about half-way off. That seems to be as far as it wants to go, hitting it pretty hard. It's a 10-yr old car.

So, I can keep beating on it, un-promising as that seems. But, I'm hoping that someone has run into this situation, and has a magic bullet.

Thanks.

[1] pix & text:
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Reply to
gbeccles
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Typical for them to bind if they have miles on them. Air hammer does wonders on them. If you haven't dropped the rack down yet it can give you extra room to get the joint apart because you have better access.

Reply to
Steve W.

Thanks.

After I got it off, I found that one axis of the intermediate shaft u-joint was locked up. I wonder if that not rotating contributed to the difficulty I had separating the shafts.

FWIW, it looked like the intermediate shaft had gotten cocked as I drive it up. So, I cut a piece of 3/4" pipe to fit around the pinion shaft, which let me strike more symetrically. Whether for that reason or not, after that, they separated.

Reply to
gbeccles

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