Daze wrote:

MS wrote:

My experience with racks having the third section have all been bad. The ONLY WAY to make that third section of steering shaft work properly is to mount the center shaft solidly between two bearings, one at each end, so the center shaft is held in one position and it cannot slide up or down, and all it can do is freely rotated on the bearings. Note I said BEARINGS, not spherical rod ends, which are NOT bearings in any stretch of imagination. This requires four u-joints to complete the system. Any other way and it will just bind up and not steer smoothly.

That has not been my experience at all.  When I retrofit the GM J-car rack to the Galaxie I did a supported intermediate shaft with heim joint.  Once I eliminated all the flex in the support there was no issue with binding.  Put lots of miles on it without issue and it steers as smooth as it did the day I installed it.  When I built it, it had to pass the "Day Scovel manual not moving test" where I rotated the steering wheel lock to lock with the car sitting on the ground engine off car not moving.  I knew that would be the max stress the system would see and once it passed that test I was good to go.
 

MS, I have been thinking about what you said and I have a theory as to why my experience was different than yours (It has been on my mind because I trust your experience and expertise)  In my application I did not actually have an intermediary shaft (to many years since I put it in to remember how it was setup), When I went out to the car and looked, what I have is a double u-joint.  By firmly securing the end of the steering shaft closest to the double u-joint I was able to eliminate all bind.  When I do the intermediary shaft on my steering it will be so short that the two u'joints will be right up next to one another effectively making it a double u-joint, and hopefully will yield the same success.  Will post my results when I have them.