Decided it was time to mount the Nardi steering wheel to the tilt column that was previously mounted after retrieving from the paint shop and noticed that the upper bearing was loose on the shaft and missing some balls. We were not prepared for the set back that awaited us. When it was given to the paint shop we failed to mount the turn signal cam and associated lock plate, spring and nut. Needless to say the shaft was not supported and the balls fell out. Of course now we are wondering where they ended up. I did find a few hanging on the grease around the race but not all. We were missing 4. I measured them with a micrometer and found them to be .125 (1/8). Went to my stash of ball bearings and

found what I needed and reinstalled them. Had everything but the steering wheel back together and still had some side play in the shaft but lower on the shaft. Turned out to be the lower bearing was also missing balls. Needless to say this turned into a long day. Had to dissemble the whole tilt mechanism which required pulling the turn signal switch and wiring, lock cylinder and tilt pivot pins and slide off the bowl. Most of the balls were MIA, so again found what was needed from my surplus. People wonder why I save everything, this is why. It also turned out that when I originally rebuilt the column the knuckle joint that is part of the tilt shaft was reversed 180 deg. This you wouldn't think is a problem except that the spline at the upper end locating the lock plate is void one groove locating it one way on the shaft. This in turn positions the canceling cam to correctly operate the canceling function of the turn signals, which brings back a memory of why they didn't cancel correctly during build up. Needless to say I wasn't going to spend the time to remove the shaft. We took the lock plate and ground off the spline point 180 deg opposite of the one that is normally missing and reinstalled it correctly. There, problem solved. I,m not going to bore you with disassembled steering column photos because it was ugly, but now we have a tight steering with functioning turn signal cancellation. So in hind sight we should have given the paint shop a FULLY assembled column, but then we would not have found the turn signal canceling problem. Lesson learned. In the end it's always nice to fix your stupid mistakes.