[LEEVON]

Ben, you're not hijacking at all, good question. I think 99tolife pretty much covered it. I'm a hack-now-and-figure-it-out-later guy so I spent about 5 minutes trying to get the steering box apart and the shaft out then reached for the cut-off and buzzed as close to the box as possible. I really don't think it matters how close you cut it to the firewall as long as the geometry works out for the steering joints. It really is just a solid bar inside a pipe, nothing fancy. My truck is supposed to be low-buck (ish) no billet shiny expensive steering column needed.

I have read that you can get a common sized bearing for about $7 but you need to have the pipe expanded to fit. Some of the vendors sell a conversion bearing for about $30 that fits right in.