Steering column interchange

97strokerHD

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My steering column bearings are bad in my truck. It is almost not drivable. I have tilt, cruise, and airbag. I have a chance to get one out of a 95 f250 that is the same without cruise. Will this be a plug and play swap or will I have to change plugs?
 

Redpower

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Hopefully someone will chime in that knows more, but I think it is plug and play. I'm pretty sure that those bearing are replicable though. The column isn't too bad to take apart, but I've never done one with an airbag though.
 

97strokerHD

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I've never taken a column apart before so I wanted to swap a good one in so I could have time to rebuild the old one.
 

Bugman

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If your truck is a 97 it does not have a air bag, they were not required until later.
 

Bugman

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The light on the dash is the ABS light for the brakes. OBS trucks do not have a drivers side or passenger side air bag. If they did you would see all kinds of warnings on the wiring under the dash to not to probe them.
 

97strokerHD

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The abs light says ABS and is on the right side of the instrument panel. The airbag light shows a picture of a person in a seat with an airbag in front of them and is on the left side of the dash by the turn signal light. It has an airbag.
 

superduty4x4

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The abs light says ABS and is on the right side of the instrument panel. The airbag light shows a picture of a person in a seat with an airbag in front of them and is on the left side of the dash by the turn signal light. It has an airbag.
No it doesn't but go ahead and try to find the airbag and let us know how it goes... The F150's were the only ones that had airbags and guess what... that portion of the cluster that has the airbag light will fit any F150-F350 from 92-97 excluding the fuster cluck spaceship body style trucks.
As far as the cruise/no cruise you will have to swap the wheel obviously but shouldn't have any other issues. The column can be rebuilt to the tune of $150 (at least that's what I had to spend about 2 years ago to do mine).
 

flattracker57

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I have a 96 f250 and it does have the airbag light, the people who say the light isn't there don't know what they're talking about... But I don't think it has an airbag because I've never seen it light up... maybe they just took that part off of something that had an airbag.
 

old man dave

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The abs light says ABS and is on the right side of the instrument panel. The airbag light shows a picture of a person in a seat with an airbag in front of them and is on the left side of the dash by the turn signal light. It has an airbag.

Yours would be the only OBS F-250HD/350 that has one. Just in case your truck does have one, disconnect both batteries for 1/2 hour before you do anything. The airbag would be under the horn pad which you remove to pull the steering wheel.

The Ford factory Service manual (EVTM) does not show any airbag circuit in it. And my 97 F-250HD does not have one. I already did the column bearings
 

JCart

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Should be a how to R&R the steering column bearings in my sig link. Thinking we have a light socket in the cluster that indicates air bags however this is for the F150 application. Iirc it's about a 3 hour job if you've not done one before taking your time.

It's in a PDF format so you can download and print, can be found in 97 red crew cab folder, Mechanical mods sub folder.

Cheers,

jrc
 
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79jasper

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You can also swap the wheels and stuff to get cruise back.
Unless you bought your truck new, someone else could have swapped in a airbag column, maybe it was all they could find.

Sent from my SM-T537R4 using Tapatalk
 

7.3psd97444

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My bearings were shot in my truck a while back. Little over a year ago.
Heres a video I took showing how bad it was. Would catch and stick, very dangerous to drive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VTdC7uEhHc&list=UUxyF3wMxkG1c84BFbaoDNHQ&index=9
I bought the rebuild kit from Ford which at that time was a hair over $100. Not sure on the price nowadays.

Part number: F6AZ-3605-AA
Kit includes;
-steel tolerance ring/3L539
-stamped steel sleeve/3518
-bearing preload spring/3520
-upper bearing snap ring/3C610
-steering wheel attaching bolt/N807493-S100
-small upper bearing/3517
-large upper bearing/3517
-Instructions

Ide say its just as easy if not easier then messing with swapping entire columns. Took me about 2 hours taking my time. Old bearings fell out in chunks. Usually the shaft is pretty worn or scared up as well. Back when I did mine I researched it a lot. Some people recommended buying and installing a new shaft, as to not prematurely damage the new bearings. Others said that if its not TOO bad to take a scotchbrite pad and smooth the shaft some and take any sharp edges off. I was operating cheap back then and did not change the shaft. So far so good. Probably put over 40k miles on it since then. No issues at all. Hope this helps.
 

97strokerHD

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Got a steering column from a 94 f150 put in today. All the plugs matched up. Just left the one for the airbag unplugged. Truck steers like a dream compared to before. Still has a little play but I'm pretty sure that's because i still need to replace one tie rod end and my ball joints seriously need replaced.
 

kmanxj

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So no F250's came with airbags? I took my 97 apart because the cruise doesn't work to see if any wires were broken or anything and it had a airbag, and It was plugged in.
 

bluedge8

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So no F250's came with airbags? I took my 97 apart because the cruise doesn't work to see if any wires were broken or anything and it had a airbag, and It was plugged in.

Did either of you that have air bags check for the sensors up front? It would be interesting to see if there were a few that had them.
 

kmanxj

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Was it plugged in at the horn pad or down at the cab harness?

At the horn pad. Would make sense then. I may have to look tonight if there is enough light when I get home and see if it is connected lower. Is it easy to see or do you have to pull dash pieces off?
 
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What's the GVWR on that f250 7.5L? I've always been under the assumption that 8800 lbs and over were no required to have airbags. Also, there is nothing in the factory service manuals (Workshop or EVTM) for 1997 F250 HD regarding an airbag (anywhere: Steering column, power distribution, fuseboxes, restraints, etc). Passenger side airbag wasn't required at all in trucks until 1998. Cheers!
 
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