Okay, now that I have my truck in my garage rather than 150 miles away I'm going to revive a dead thread. Apparently nobody wants to do the research or make expensive mistakes for me so I'll go ahead. I don't think I'm going to go the junkyard route. Pretty dead set on doing this so here goes (and I will be taking better pictures, this is just a quick cell phone photo to see what and how I can do this). Be easy on me, I'm just in the "I think this might work" phase and haven't actually started buying things.
This is a schematic and photo of one company's (Unisteer) drop in unit that utilizes an Ididit tilt column. I figured I needed some good base measurements and after asking about some specific measurements of the column I was surprised when they sent me the actual measurements. The factory column is about 5" from top of the column to the bottom of the cone. The tilt Ididit column is 7.5" so I should be able to push it 2.5" closer to the dash.
Now the fun part. I mocked up the factory brake pedal and steering column mount and quickly realized I don't have the room to keep everything and make this work.
So right off I'm seeing that I will need to go with a universal dash mount and have to figure out what to do with the emergency brake handle. I really wanted to keep that because unlike some I really like that handle.
It looks like if I eliminate the column and emergency brake bracket that I should have all kinds of room under the dash.