I was out in the garage tonight trying to figure out why the steering is so loose on Ol' Blue.  There is a bearing at the end of the steering column shaft that has slipped down a bit and was causing a wobble.  I managed to press that back a bit and get it more into position.  It will ultimately have to be replaced I'm sure.  There is still a pretty good amount of play further up the column.  I don't know how to get into the middle of the column to fix that.

The really sad news is that I pulled one of the rear tires off to take a look around and found that the previous owner's mechanic actually downgraded the axles in this Jeep.  Somehow, there was a broken pin in the old Detroit locker.  So his mechanic offered to fix it, naturally.  He replaced the locker with a 27 spline Detroit and two junkyard axles.  Luckily, I had the previous owner keep the old parts and provide them with the Jeep.  So I have two Superior Super 35, 30 spline axles and one broke Detroit.

I will have to look around on the web and see if I can find a 30 spline Detroit locker for cheap.  The lugs on the junkyard axles are not even long enough to come completely thru the lug nuts.  This is not safe and I'm sure that these big tires would shatter the junkyard axles with little to no effort.  In fact, I am surprised they didn't give way when I drove up the trailer.

This could be a huge deciding factor on which Jeep to keep...

 

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