47-55.1 DD Steering Rod wet noodle

[NeoJuice]

Ok I made a stupid mistake. A long time ago when assembling the truck I mounted my steering column in the lowest position in the stock column hole. Later on I found out my under floor brake pedal comes very close to the bottom of the steering column and your foot hits up against the column making it very unsafe.

After thinking about a solution to this problem I removed the floor column mount, cut out the metal I welded in to fill the top of the hole. Welded the mount bolt holes shut and decided to start again.

I adjusted the dash column mount and set the new floor mount location at the top of the stock hole. After making this move I now have plenty of room for the brake pedal and plenty of room for your feet from hitting the column.

With the increased angle now of the column I ordered up a double u-joint from speedway motors because the normal joint angle was not going to cut it.

After doing some test fitting and trimming of the DD shaft I got everything pretty much where I want it. But here lies the problem........Before when I had the column in the lowest position my Heim joint kept everything stable and firm with no flopping and was as smooth as butter.

For testing purposes I temporarily mounted the Heim bracket about 1.5-2" higher then it was before to check for stability. Well as you can see it's flopping around like a wet noodle which I'm not happy about so I'm looking for a solution to my problem because I just keep staring at it over and over trying to come up with a solution.

Option 1 - Move the heim joint up closer to the double U joint and make a bigger bracket because it's up so high or maybe off the firewall

Option 2 - Move the heim joint right next to the middle u joint to stop the flopping around. The heim would still be located on the upper D shaft just sitting right next to the u joint.

Option 3 - Somehow add another heim joint to the lower DD shaft to stop the wet noodle from flipping around. This would almost appear to be impossible between the frame, header & inner fender clearances. This would also be used in conjunction with the upper heim joint/mount to make things stable.

If this was the case I would assume that for every section of DD shaft a person has there should be a Heim. I was looking at this thread https://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/...d.php?t=810497 and he only has one as I did before.

But I'm wondering the issue I'm experiencing now is because of the double u-joint instead of the single one as before.

I've included a couple pictures of the old setup and videos to show the new setup. You can see how tight of a space I'm dealing with now that the front is back on the truck.

Videos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/c2VDdnstPxnXXcVaA

Thank you.