Kent Moore J-23193. 1 3/16" Upper bearing nut socket. Completely obsolete! It removes the upper bearing nut so you can remove the tilt housing. Without it, your up a creek. Its a must have socket along with the pivot pin puller and the lock ring depressor. Got it off Ebay.
Its basically just an extra deep, thin wall 1 3/16" socket. Even my Snap on 1/2" drive deep socket set wasn't deep enough and only goes to 1 1/8"
Just looked, and my deep socket set max's out at 1-/16". Apparently I've never disassembled a tilt column.
Steering columns are kind of fun...and kind of suck to work on. The biggest prob is the special tools needed. At one time, they were REALLY hard and expensive to buy. My pivot pin puller is Snap-on, bought maybe 30 years ago. Back then you couldn't buy the lock ring depressor either, except from a tool truck. So...if you had to work on them you borrowed, bought or made what you needed. Just in the last five years, I've bought GM column tools off ebay, besides the tools Jason mentioned, there are still other tools you need if you want to go deep say into a 67 GS tilt column and swap a bowl or something like that.
Nice find!... My shop originally catered to Insurance companies when I first opened in 1986. We specialized in Auto Vandalizim Repair. Let me tell you that there was a lot of GM and some Chrysler columns that rolled through the shop. At one stage we were rebuilding 3-4 per day as well as replacing dash boards and stereo equipment that had been stolen or damaged. If I was a betting man I would say I have serviced close to 700-800 columns over the past 30 years, and still do but not the same columns due to change in manufacturing. After all those columns I still don't have that nifty little socket. I know that socket is for the early style columns but I still gotta get me one! When the Auto Manufacturer's got wise and changed the column design the Ins. vandalism repair work declined. That left the opportunity to change the shop into the Performance and Mechanical Restoration Business that it is today, which we were doing as side work all along. Thanks for the part number. Larry
Interesting post. What was the "design change" that created the decline in vandalism repair? Double cut keys perhaps?
The column housings in the 80's went from metal to plastic. Or as I used to call them "egg shells". A large screwdriver placed where the turn signal switch stalk was would break the housing, exposing the rack and sector gear. after that, all you had to do was work the rack to start the car and unlock the column. It was a joke. Once you had the door open, it took seconds to drive off if the car had a Saginaw column. Not exactly sure when they changed the design, but after they did, it got a little harder to steal them
Just an fyi... found a substitute for the Kent Moore socket (see post #1 for a picture). I was able to use an extra deep 1-3/16 inch oil sending unit socket. Amazon had it for $7 - $8. Ordered it and it fits nicely without any grinding. Below is a picture of the socket showing the manufacturer and part number. View attachment 357991
