steering shaft and u joints and rag joints and double D and......

[badherb]

OK! I had one million questions regarding the whole list of parts available for a steering system; from steering wheel to power steering box or manual box; which I don't care about since I have power steering but much should apply to the two systems equally.
Having said that I’m not an expert but I spent about 4 hours researching the web to find out everything I could because I WAS ignorant of everything in the system. Here are some terms being thrown around:
Double D: a shaft the looks like two Ds stuck together back to back.
spine size: 3/4 30 spline, 3/4 36 spline, 13/16 36 spline, 1 inch 40 spline. Everything seems like Greek language until we break it down.
Rag joint: dampens steering vibrations
Steering dampener: rag joint on steroids. And twice the $.
U joint: universal joint to help with steering intermediate shaft angles.
Support bearing: required if using two or more u joints.
35 degrees: max angle of a u joint. need two or more if over.
Don’t weld!
Here is the system I have and the info you may need to rebuild or fab up your own system when you don’t know everything that is there.
I purchased a universal Ididtit column. It has a 3/4 36 spline output shaft. Some have double D some have 1 inch 40 spline, many variations. just for reference my stock truck had a double d 3/4. I have some variation of a Saginaw power steering box I believe it’s a series 800 but that is really just totally unimportant as I found out. All you need to know is input shaft size and spline count as there are a bunch of them. I took longer than I thought I should on the details of mine but my calipers did not read the sizes I have listed. I had to compare to a mistaken purchased rag joint to the stock rag joint. Get this 13/16 is .813 ish. My shaft (sounds dirty sorry) read max .803 and min of .70 measured on the recess of the splines (a milled groove in the shaft with no splines). I found the rag joint that didn’t fit was a 3/4. So it has to be a 13/16 and according to Ididits web site the 13/16 has only one spline count of 36, mine had 18 with flat spots for indexing. Am I making sense. meow.
Ok so rehash this.... 3/4 36 spline output from column. 13/16 36 spline input to box. Now the tough part is finding all this shhhtuff on line. It took about 45 minutes and here is what I came up with from Summit: ididit 3000055240 - ididit Steering Rag Joints, ididit 3000033452 - ididit U-Joints, Flaming River FR9950 - Flaming River Steering Shafts. At Summit I could not find the Ididit shaft.
So I have this for a run down: 3/4 36 spline to 1-inch double D u joint, 1-inch double D 13/16 36 spline rag joint and a 1-inch double D intermediate shaft. It’s not collapsible but could be if they had one. I also wanted to use my 1960 steering wheel but that won’t fit any ididit steering columns, according to Ididit, so I have to find one I like and adapt or find 68 or newer and that will fit with the proper horn kit.
I did this in a day and worried about it for months but did not know where to start. I hope I helped someone out there. Measure each end count splines and break it down to each component it will be much easier.