Landon Robinson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
 -=> Quoting Roy J. Tellason to Landon Robinson <=-
 RJT> Landon Robinson wrote in a message to All:
 LR> Does anyone know from what year to what year of steering column 
 LR> will fit in  a '77 Ford F-250 2wd with power steering?  I'm 
 RJT> I ran into that problem with _my_ '77 Ford truck...
 RJT> The little metal bit that the shift collar moves busted loose.
 LR> Same thing that happened to mine. The aluminum shell that the 
 LR> shift arm goes into cracked inside as well. 
Yep,  mine too.  And I made the mistake of first replacing it with one from a 
junkyard,  which also cracked after a bit.  Getting a new one from a dealer 
showed me that Ford had improved on the design a bit,  making it thicker in 
the area of greatest stress.  That one is still in the truck,  no problem.
 LR> I'm going to try to get that little peice welded back on so 
 LR> that I have a spare if it ever happens again.  I plan on keeping
 LR> this truck for a long time.
Probably not worth the hassle.  Get a new shift collar from a dealer and when 
you replace the column parts there won't be any more stress on that.
 RJT> I did go to a junkyard and get another one,  I think from a 
 RJT> '78,  and found that there was no provision for the neutral 
 RJT> safety switch. Something to look out for,  I guess... 
 RJT> Apparently at some point in there they changed the location of 
 RJT> the switch from the column to down on the tranny. 
 LR> I don't know where mine is, I havn't really looked. 
It's easy enough to see if it's on the column.
 LR> I have a schematic for my entire truck here beside me but it 
 LR> doesn't have the firewall connector included in the drawing so 
 LR> I can't tell where the connector is. Although according to it 
 LR> the neutral safety switch and the backup light switch are both 
 LR> part of the same unit.  So my guess is that it is down on the 
 LR> tranny.
Mine are both part of the same unit too,  on the column.
 LR> I did look in the Hollander cross-reference manual today at
 LR> the library and found out that I can use from a '73 to a '77 
 LR> steering column for mine. 
I suspect that first one I got that wouldn't work was either a '78 or maybe a 
'79.  I know that Ford used basically the same body on those trucks up to 
'79, but I guess they changed some other stuff, little details here and 
there...
email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
--- 
---------------