intermediate steering shaft replacement

[lmholmes11]

How big of job is it? My shaft rattling is driving me crazy!

[rapidoxidationman]

Easy.
Pull the driver's side front wheel
remove the fender skirt (and the few things that are attached to it in the engine compartment)
remove the turbo pipe - it is not hard to remove, but you need to turn and twist it to get it out
remove the accelerator pedal
remove the intermediate shaft
installation is the reverse of removal

I may have missed a step or two, but you'll catch what I missed.

I thought it would be hard until I actually did it. Just pay attention to the nuts that connect the shafts together and make sure you turn the right one. AND: DON'T turn the steering wheel while you're doing the job or you could trash the clock spring that connects the steering wheel controls to the rest of the wiring harness.

[lmholmes11]

great thank you for the reply. What shaft did you go with?

[rapidoxidationman]

I got one from the GM dealer; I think it was about $90.

[Quietcart]

You might want to check the bushing on the bottom end of the top part of the steering column just above the coupling for the intermediate shaft. On my truck (2007 Classic 3500 LBZ) that was where the noise was coming from - no play in the intermediate shaft at all. I believe others have posted this fix also with part numbers.

To test if that was the location since it did not seem very loud at all when shaking the shaft, I took up the slack with a judiciously sized piece of small vacuum line wrapped around the shaft and jammed up into small recess in the the green plastic bushing housing. A quick test drive was nice and quiet, so on my rig that was the source of the noise. Do not have the replacement part number handy, but a search should find it.

Peace

don

[DickWells]

Are you talking about the upper-intermediat shaft? If so, I don't understand why anything under the hood, or near the accelerator pedal needs to be removed. I've had mine out several times over the years without even having to get under the truck.
My final solution was to use the first after-market replacement that I bought, and modify it with about 8 little 1/8" ball bearings, held tight under some little .145" ~ ball bearings and 8 set screws, drilled and tapped into the outer shaft housing. Took several hours of work, but it's held for about 5 years, now. BTW, it wont work on the factory, splined shaft, only on the AM ones with the wide flats. The plastic sliders in these wear out in short order, just like the factory splined ones.