Good morning. Today we're going to be working on the truck steering. We're getting ready to do the whole suspension, but the steering shaft is something I wanted to do in upgrade to. These trucks 88 to 98, their steering was far better than the C-10s that preceded them, but they were still not great. There was some slop into steering, not a lot, but just enough. When they were new, they were fine, but as the years progressed, the age, the wear and turn on parts, you would get more and more slop into steering. There are several ways to fix that. Most are pretty expensive. If you get a new high-performance steering box, that will take care of it, but it also costs about $450 to $500. That's a little too much, especially for this budget truck. So what we're going to do is a steering shaft upgrade. The lower portion of the steering shaft and the 88 to 98s have what's called a rag joint. That rag joint is literally made up of a fabric and rubber that acts as a cushion between the actual steering shaft and the steering box. Over time, that wears, and even with a brand new one, with the weight of the truck, the truck moving, turning it all, it produces a certain amount of give that, unfortunately, increases the play in steering well. So what we're going to do is modify that with a different lower steering shaft that is made a little different. Let me show you what I mean. I just removed the steering shaft from the truck, and it was pretty simple. It takes an 11-millimeter bolt at the box, a 15-millimeter bolt up at the upper portion of the shaft. It contracts a bit. I just tapped it with a hammer, and it easily came out. You didn't have to pry on it or really work it hard. The shaft we're going to replace it with comes from an 84 to 2000 model Jeep Cherokee. Now, something that's different about the Jeep Cherokee is, you can see on the trucks during the shaft, here's that rag joint. It literally is made up of rubber and fabric, and it will give under pressure. The Jeep, by contrast, has a universal joint. That's not going to give. At the top, it's the same way. This has a universal joint in this position right here, and there is no give to it. The shaft does, you can adjust it as about a two-inch travel either direction to fit what you need. As you can see, I've barely touched it, and it is the same length. The original steering shaft, you need an 11-millimeter and a 15 to remove it. The new steering shaft only requires a 13-millimeter. Let's install this one and see how it looks. Once the modification I made to the shaft, that is an absolutely necessary, but I wanted to make it for added security. The factory steering shaft, this goes on the upper portion of the column and a bolt runs through it. When you look over, here you can see the bolt runs through the center of that shaft and that secures it to it. On the Jeep one, it has a collar that squeezes it. What I wanted to do is make sure that we had a little added security. I drilled a hole right here so that I can run this bolt and it has a nut with an nylon insert on the other side so that it would have the added security of the same hole. It has a bolt that goes through the hole to secure it to the shaft and makes sure, under all circumstances, it won't come off and then it's got the compression bolt on the outside that'll squeeze it to the shaft so it is definitely not going to come off. When you look at the steering box, the steering gear that comes out of the box has these grooves in it. You have to seat the shaft far enough, correctly positioned over the flat spot, bring it down far enough so that shaft goes over this grooved area because that is where it's grooved to make clearance for that bolt. Let's put the shaft on. The steering shaft will slip right over the top and you don't want to turn this universal joint too much because when it does, it's an open area there when it decreases that open area and there's a shaft that sticks out of your gearbox here and it'll hit that. You have to angle this back enough so that it easily fits over that and it'll fit down, it fits down over like that. Okay, let's slip that bolt in and the bolt goes right in. Okay, now we're going to attach the upper portion of the steering shaft. The compresses a bit, slips right over and I'm putting this bolt through there. Now that bolt tightened runs second bolt through for added security. The steering shaft installation is complete. As you can see, starting at the bottom, it attaches just like the factory does with the bolt across that specific area and there's no problem there going up the shaft. You can see where the original bolt went through for the shaft and now drilled a small hole here for another bolt to go through and this is actually an extra bolt that came out of the donor suburban so it is metric and it is a GM bolt. So let's just make sure that I'm sure this was enough but that's just extra security. The factory trim would not go over this because of the size of the universal joint as far back as it goes. The other trim, the rag joint is down here and it would cover but considering the amount of the universal joint is high up away from the steering box, it would not work. This should be just fine. It's got a rubber boot that covers the connection between the two shafts and that's the way of jigging it. So this installation is complete. So I appreciate you watching, appreciate your thumbs up. Also in the description below I'll have a link to the product that I used, how much it cost. Believe it was $50 or $60 but you can find plenty of them on eBay or Amazon from $50 to $75 and it's an easy install so it's definitely a modification I would recommend. It's easy to do, it's quick and it will have positive results. Thanks again for watching.