Having your street machine stolen is a stomach-wrenching experience. Through a desperately needed stroke of good luck, the police recovered our ’70 Chevelle. Of course, the model citizens who pilfered Cheap Street managed to mangle a few things on the car, so we’ve been repairing the damage over the last few weeks. They screwed up the steering column pretty badly, mostly from slide-hammering the ignition-lock cylinder. We can’t figure out why, because the keys were in the ignition when it was stolen. That means that the thieves were even dumber than we were for leaving the keys there in the first place.
After assessing the damage, we were pleased to find that the main steering collar and shift tube were left intact. Browsing through Year One’s Chevelle catalog yielded all the parts we needed to repair the mangled steering column and a few other things that needed rebuilding or replacing anyway. Our Chevelle is equipped with the standard non-tilt column used in most ’69-and-later GM cars, which proved to be surprisingly easy to rebuild. The cosmetic improvement alone was well worth the afternoon’s time spent disassembling and detailing the assembly. The only downside is the dramatic contrast it creates with the dingy dashboard and broken instrumentation. We’ll remedy that soon enough, but in the meantime check out how we freshened up the column.
