I am in the midst of attempting to tighten my wobbly tilt steering. As a common problem, I understand the procedure and have found a fair amount online including pictures, although the detailed explanation in this forum seems to have been removed:
In this explanation, I've reached the spot where I am supposed to remove the tilt lever, and then slide the cover off the steering column. However the tilt lever, which is supposed to be only screwed on, is really tight and won't budge. I've read that Loctite may be used on these- Is this correct? Should I definitely be able to twist it counterclockwise? This is almost the last step that I need to get at the 4 inner torx bolts to tighten this. It's a small but frustrating problem. I obviously don't want to break it.
I just did this job a few weeks back. I ended up having to use vice grips on my tilt lever, that sucker was torqued tighter than a lug nut. I tried having a rag around it before putting vice grips on and they just slipped. I'll just have to sand and paint it to cover the vice grip marks I guess or find one at a junkyard that wasn't on THAT tight.
Even though you're almost there, here are links to some videos that were VERY helpful and show every step you need.
The online videos help. I'm mostly there- wheel is off, lock plate is off, ignition cylinder is off, all applicable screws are out. It's just the tilt lever holding me back. I'm amazed that you didn't break yours. I did see another posting about this:
I've made progress. I got to the four torx screws in my wobbly steering column and tightened them, applying threadlock as well.
In hindsight, although Oliver Scholz's explanation with pictures (http://www.fieros.de/en/articles/steering.html) was very useful, it was not necessary to remove the steering column entirely as he intimates, and it would have saved me some time re-connecting and tightening.
My unremovable tilt lever problem solved itself, as I realized that the tilt lever shroud is separate from the ignition cover. Once I had the ignition cover off, I just moved the tilt lever cover out of the way:
However, I have one more minor question. A small clip fell out of the ignition/wiper lever housing. I'm not sure where it goes, and am wondering if someone can enlighten me. I didn't see any pictures of this in Jazzman's excellent explanation:
If someone could let me know where to fit this back, it would be much appreciated. That should do it.
The key presence switch assembly tells the chime unit when the key is inserted into the ignition lock cylinder, and consists of a spring and the switch itself: Assemble the spring and key presence switch by hooking the spring's tab over one end of the switch and rotating it into place:
[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 05-28-2015).]
I found that it was much easier to insert the key presence switch and spring when the ignition key assembly was removed. Also, the contacts in my presence switch were not making contact even though the green tab on the bottom of the ignition key tumbler was pressing down as designed. To fix this, I pushed the curved bronze contact at the top of the presence switch (just at the entrance of the white plastic switch housing) upward very slightly. Still, seemed like a lot of work since there is no longer a chime in my car ...
