If you say the words “GM Steering Column” to a car enthusiast, there’s a good chance they’ll all be thinking about the same unit: The “Saginaw” steering column, which was so ubiquitous between the 1970s and 1990s that you’d find it in everything from AMCs to Chevy trucks to Buick sedans to Jeeps. Saginaw columns — especially the tilt ones — found their way into tens of millions of cars, and while they were generally simple and easy to repair, they suffered on major problem: They’d come loose and just flop all over the place in an alarming way. I know because I’ve experienced it.
The company today is called Nexteer, and its home has been Saginaw, Michigan since the company was established as “Jackson, Church & Wilcox Co.” back in 1906. A few years later, Buick bought the company just before becoming part of General Motors.
In time, the steering company became the “Saginaw Steering Gear Division of GM” and later just “Saginaw Division,” since it built more than just steering parts. In the 1990s, it became known as Delphi Automotive Systems, an independent company, and in 2010 it became Nexteer and was sold of to Pacific Century Motors.
These days, Nexteer is doing all sorts of development on Advanced Driver Assist technology, but a few decades ago it was all about that classic tilt column. Here it is in my 1991 Jeep Wrangler YJ:
And here it is in my 1989 Chevy K1500:
The wheels may look a bit different, and maybe the stalks are a little different, but the columns themselves are identical, and what you’ll find in pretty much anything GM between the 1970s and early 1990s. Here you can see the Saginaw column in a 1987 Buick Century:
Here it is in a C4 Corvette:
You get the idea. This thing was in everything, including my old Jeep Grand Wagoneer:
Here’s a little .gif of me demonstrating the problem that these steering columns had — they wobbled all over the place:
But my Grand Wagoneer’s steering column’s wobble was nothing compared to that of my K1500. I don’t have a video of it with the wheel on, but just watch this video I took after I’d removed the wheel:
My steering wheel got so wobbly that, at one point while I tried doing a u-turn, it actually bound up! Do you know how absurdly dangerous that is?!
Anyway, to fix this, one basically has to tear the column apart in order to tighten four bolts. Yes, sometimes the “pivot pins” on which the wheel pivots when it’s being tilted also wear out, which is why I bought two extras, but the primary cause of the dreaded Saginaw Wobble is four e-torx bolts buried deep inside the column.
Getting to them takes time and specialized tools, but actually the job itself isn’t too tough. You start by just pulling off the center horn cover. This reveals a little triangular nut retainer that you can remover with a pair of flatheads or a set of pliers. Under that is a 13/16th nut.
You disconnect the horn wire, zip off the nut, then take the other end of horn wire out of the column, and then break out a special steering wheel puller tool (which you can rent for free from Autozone) to take the wheel off.
That yields this steering lock plate, which is being pushed towards you from behind via a spring, but which is being held by a little retaining ring in the center shaft.
To get the lock plate out, you use the same rental tool to push the plate, which gets the stress off the little retaining ring, which you can then remove, at which point the lock plate slips towards you right over the shaft.
From there, you have to push some wires up from under the dash so you have enough slack to yank the white piece you see in the image above towards you and over the shaft. Then you have to use another special tool to remove the aforementioned pivot pins, which lets to pull all this stuff off:
This gives you access to the four e-torx xcrews; here’s one of them:
All four of my column’s e-torx screwed had loosened to the point where they were just bouncing around in their holes. I tightened them with some loctite, installed some new pivot pins for fun, and now my column is tight.
Here are a bunch of repair videos from folks who have had to deal with the same problem:
It’s shocking how many vehicles were built with this faulty steering column. And while many of them don’t fail until they’re 30 years old and 200,000 miles, I think something as critical as a steering column should never fail, especially not because the factory decided not to use threadlocker.
So beware; if you buy an AMC/Jeep/GM product from the 1970s-early 1990s, and the steering column has never been apart, it’s only a matter of time.
So the Saginaw Wobble wasn’t a dance invented by Lefty Frizzell in the mid-60s?
I didn’t have the loose column wobble but did have to tear down the column to replace the ignition switch. The switch is buried deep inside the column and is actuated by a rod connected to the key switch. What a nightmare job. It took me a couple of days to accomplish in the dead of winter. I will admit that there was significant muttering and cursing involved.
Done several 70’s era GM columns, they’re not difficult to do, just need the steering wheel puller and the lock plate tool (I’ve done them without this). You can also get your own puller and lock plate tools fairly cheap at Harbour Freight or similar place.
When was threadlocker invented?
Saginaw, cheese it’s good.
Good grief DT in the video looks 13. Or are we all just old now?
I went from 13 to 50.
I think Project Cactus added a good dozen years, I know it did for me!
No you rusted.
Been there. I’ve had several of these with the wobble and it has been 50/50 on the pivot pins or the bolts being loose. On the ones where the vehicle was relatively new (<10 years) but high miles (200,000+) it was generally the pins that were worn out, but the older the vehicle was the more likely the bolts were loose. I'm not sure if I was meant to Loctite the bolts, but I always did (blue, not red).
That’s about the only times not having tilt is a gift. You see a lot of high trim high optioned square bodies with a standard column because the tilt failed at some point and someone threw a non tilt column in it. Good article hopefully more people fix them then just throw a non tilt junk yard unit it them. I’ve fixed them a few times in the past good opportunity to fix or replace stocks and switches that’s a whole other battle though.
Wow, flashback to my first car, an ’86 Chevy Celebrity which indeed had this problem. I remember paying a mechanic to fix the problem which he did and I never thought about what the actual repair entailed until now. TIL.
I had to tear one halfway down in my 94 XJ because the cancellation cam on the turn signals was busted. Was kind of fun to see how easy it was to take it apart/ how things worked in there.
Yep, super common, especially on the GMT400’s before 1995. After that I think the design is very different due to airbags.
But I never knew why they failed, or how many other cars had the issue until now! Good article.