2008 Ford Expedition Lower Intermediate Steering Shaft with Coupler Ford OEM 8L1Z-3B676-A

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on a 2011 Ford F150. We're going to be replacing the steering shaft. It's going to be a fairly easy job. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need this part or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com.

There's going to be two mounting bolts, one that mounts down onto the power steering rack down here, right down here where my screwdriver is. It's on the lower end of the intermediate shaft. And then we have the upper one. That will be located right here on the upper end of the intermediate shaft. To remove this, we're going to have to use a 13 millimeter and we're going to turn them to the left until they're completely out. And then that'll be how we remove it. But first, we have to go ahead inside the vehicle and I want to show you something's that's very important.

We're inside the vehicle now. Something to pay special attention to is if you're going to be removing something with the steering system like the steering shaft, there's going to be nothing that's going to hold your steering wheel from being able to turn at that point unless you have it in the locked position which even while the key is out of this particular vehicle, it doesn't lock. What I want to make sure is once I remove that steering shaft, this won't be able to spin because it's a clock spring in here and if it spins out of control, you could damage that. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to something as basic as a bungee cord. You can use a strap or even if you have the tool that specific for it. It holds the steering wheel. Whatever you need to do to make it so the steering wheel can't spin.

I'm just going to take my bungee cord, I'm going to go down to the brake pedal, little shaft there, I'm going to go up around my steering wheel couple times here, being careful not to cause any damage to to steering wheel itself obviously. Then I'm going to bring it back down, lock it in. There we are. The steering wheel can still move a little bit but it's not going to spin out of control. It's not just going to keep spinning and then we're going to be like, "Oh no." That's going to go nowhere. Now we can go back outside and we're going to continue remove that intermediate shaft.

Now we know that the steering wheel is nice and secured, it's not going to spin around all crazy on us, break the clock spring, cost us a whole bunch of money, I'm going to use my 13 millimeter socket on my ratchet. I'm just going to turn this to the left. Should break free. There we are. If you have access to an air gun, probably be super helpful. It won't take all day. But anyway, I'm basically going to get this thing so it's all the way out and then I'm going to just put it in a couple more threads, just so it holds it in there. Then I'm going to go ahead and remove the lower one.

Located right at the bottom of the intermediate shaft is the lower bolt which is a 10 millimeter head. You can use your ratchet with a socket or you can go ahead and use a ratchet wrench or a regular wrench. Use your preference. You do you Boo-Boo. I'm going to go ahead and get up in here. I'm going to try to start it with a 10 millimeter ratchet wrench. I like to keep multiple tools at my disposal. Oh yeah. I'm going to turn that to the left. I'm going to remove it completely. There's the bottom bolt, 10 millimeter. The top one had a 13 millimeter so they are different. Just set that there.

Okay, I've got the bottom bolt out now. I'm going to come back up to the top. I'm going to remove the top bolt. Like I said, it's considerably bigger than the bottom bolt as you can tell. Pretty good odds you're not going to be able to mix those up. I'm going to take something like a small hammer. I'm just going to kind of bonk this steering shaft down away from the upper steering shaft. If it doesn't seem like it's moving like that, sometimes what people like to do, see if I can find it, there's a little slit right along here, you could try to stick something in there like a screwdriver or a pry bar, try to separate it a little bit. Maybe that'll help your penetrant work its way in. That's up to you. I'm just going to grab a bigger hammer. I'm going to try that. The reason why I'm starting at the top and not the bottom is because when I'm banging like this, I don't want to be driving the shaft up. I'll explain it to you when I'm done hammering.

It is coming off, it's just taking its time. There we are. I've got that removed. The reason why I started with the top rather than the bottom, firstly of course because it's easier to get to. But secondly, because if I started with the bottom and I was hammering up, I'm going to be going bang, bang, pushing this shaft up as well. Assuming that the steering shaft is frozen. If it's not frozen, you know the shaft's going to be able to compress and do its thing but there's probably a pretty good reason why you're replacing that shaft in the first place. More than likely it's frozen. If I started hammering from the bottom up, I'm going to be driving this shaft up which is going to cause issues further up down the line or up the line I guess you'd say, not up down the line. Possible airbag issues or anything like that. Let's just avoid that a 100%. We took off the part that's going to cost a whole bunch of money and now we'll go ahead down to the bottom.

We can either try to get this from up top, hammering upward or we can go underneath, use something like a pry bar or a long chisel of some sort and try to bang it up. I'll see if I can reach it like this. If not, we'll just raise the vehicle and get underneath. Almost there. Down in here. There we are friends. We removed our old shaft. Now we're going to match it up with our new one and we'll go from there.

Okay, friends. Quick product comparison for you. We have our old shaft out of our 2011 Ford F150. I just removed it. We have our brand new, quality 1A Auto part right here. As you can tell, they're both the exact same. One might seem a little longer than the other, that's okay. It compresses. What you'd like to notice is you have a bolt hole here, a bolt hole there, this is the big side. Turn it, one side's threaded, perfect. Next we'll turn them around. There we go. We've got a smaller bolt hole here because we had two different size bolts. Flip them, sorry about the noise. Threaded side, perfect. You need to have one side that's threaded. As you can tell, they're both pretty much the exact same. I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be great to put in this quality 1A Auto part. If you need this part, or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com.

Okay, friends so now what I did is I got that intermediate steering shaft out and what I want to do is I want to put a little bit of copper never seize right on the shaft. Just kind of like that. I can work it around. Some people say do it, some people say don't. It's really up to you. The reason why I do do it though is so someday if I have to take this back off, maybe another 100,000 miles or however long it takes for it to wear out or if I have to do another service, I'll be able to get it off nice and easy. I put it on the top side and I put it on the rack side and then once I have that all on there, I take my two bolts that I removed and I put on a little bit of thread locker. I have access to red, normally I would prefer to use blue which is like a medium strength, red is super strength. But I do want to use something. Red's what I have, so red's what I used.

Now what I would do I would just grab my shaft and I'm going to slide it on there. But first I need to clean off my hands so I don't go ahead and make a mess on everything.

Here's what we're going to be looking at. On the shaft, on the rack, there's going to be a slot going through it. That's where the bolt's going to go through. Here's where the bolt comes through this. You want to make sure that this lines up with where the slot is, where your bolt's going to go through. It's going to come through this end and that's where it's going to be tightening up in. We're going to go from this side right through and tighten it on.

First what I'm going to do is I'm going to get the arm down in there where the shaft should sit. I'm going to get it down in there and I'm going to get it set up so everything's going to line up and then I'm just going to bring this, I'm going to slide it down onto the shaft and once the hole's lined up with this, I'm going to put my bolt through. All I'm going to do is start it. I'm not going to get too far but at least a few threads in. And then I'm going to grab my upper part of the shaft and I'm going to try to extend it up and get it lined up with the upper part of the shaft up here.

For now, while I'm trying to get it in, I'll just condense it, bring it down. See if I can get my arm in here. Okay, I'm in. I'm going to get the shaft lined up. And then I'll get out of the way. There we go. I'm just shaking it and wiggling it, trying to get it down. I'll take a look again, looks like it's getting close but it's not all the way in. I'm going to grab a nice small hammer. I'm going to try to go on the ear. See if I can see. I'm not hammering very hard. I just want to go far enough down so that the bolt can go through.

Now that I've got it that far down, I'm going to check it with the bolt. I'll see if I can get the bolt through. If not, I'll just push it down a little further. Remember I used the small bolt on the bottom. Or I removed the small bolt so that's what I'm going to use again to install. I'll stick it down in here. See if I can find the hole. Feels like it's still going to need to go down a little bit more. There we go. I got it started in there. Now I'm just going to go ahead and snug it up. Using my 10 millimeter ratchet wrench, it's easiest for me. All I had to do really was just, I used my mirror to try to see through the hole in the shaft and the hole in the power steering rack shaft and try to line it up. Whether it be you have to push the intermediate shaft up or down, that's something you're going to have to try to figure out with your mirror or however you want to do it. For me, I just had to down a little further.

I got a little loose still. If you wanted to you, you can go ahead and tighten that up because it's really not going to affect too much up top here but generally speaking, I don't like to try to tighten anything up completely until I have both bolts at least started.

Now I'm going to grab the upper part of my intermediate shaft. There we go. Got the upper part of my intermediate shaft. I'm just going to try to line it up with the upper part of the upper shaft. I'm just trying to put the shaft on here. There we are. Got those two holes lined up the best I can. I'm going to take my upper bolt, got my little dab of thread locker on there. It's your preference, if you want to use some or not, I would definitely recommend it. Turn that in by hand. Goes in nice. There we are. I've got that bottomed out. Now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to finish bottoming out the lower one and then I'm going to torque these down.

Okay everyone, I've got my torque wrench set to 22 foot pounds, that's the torque for the upper and the lower bolt. I'm going to start with the lower, I'm going to be using my 10 millimeter socket. If you're lucky enough to have a shorter torque wrench than this, well good for you. This one right here, is just going to have to work. It's what I've got. I'm going to give it a try, see if I can get it on the bolt down there. Course this time, let's see. There we go. Okay, got it on. Just going to see if I can get this to 22 foot pounds. There it is. That's the lower. If I can get my socket off of here.

I'm using a 13 now. I have an extension. You can use whatever you need to do but the torque is 22 foot pounds. There we are. We've got those torqued down. Now we can go ahead and relieve our tension from our steering wheel and we should be good to go. I'm just going to relieve tension. There we are. Feels great.

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