Steering sure can be a pain. If it wasn't so important, I'd ignore it. After the trail ride, my steering felt really loose and free on the road. Don't know why considering how I babied the truck in Indiana. Anyway, I took a look at things and discovered one of the rag joints torn to 50% strength or less. Hmm. I had read an article on TRS a while back that mentioned a certain year(s) of Explorer having regular u-joints for the intermediate steering shaft. Had also read about buying brand new u-joints.
Well, brand new Borgeson needle bearing u-joints run just over $75. Ouch. What about that Explorer thing? I looked up the article and it said they were on early 1990 Explorers. Ha-ha! There are no 1990 Explorers, sort-of. The Explorer came out in 1990 for the 1991 model year. My local junk yard reported having 2. So I went junkyarding. I looked at the one 1991 Explorer they had and a bunch of other Explorers, Rangers of various years, even a couple Mustangs and F150's. It's amazing how many different designs they have used on those vehicles for a part that really could have been identical all along. The 1991 Explorer's intermediate shaft had a telescoping double D shaft with what appears to be a needle bearing u-joint at the top and a rag joint at the bottom.
So I took it home and dissected my original shaft and the Explorer shaft and started measuring stuff and looking at Borgeson's catalog. In the end, I used the Explorer shaft, minus the rag joint and ordered a Borgeson #013449 joint for the bottom. So I only had to buy one $75 u-joint and one $22 intermediate shaft assembly.
Here Is the article in the tech section. Here's how I put mine together.
Here is the Explorer shaft with most of the lower rag joint removed.
The last piece of the rag joint is staked to the inner piece of the telescoping shaft like this. A side grinder or cutoff wheel removes it easily.
I cleaned up the shaft pieces and installed the new Borgeson joint. I used anti-sieze for most of the assembly and on threaded fasteners. Check your overall length of the assembly. I cut between 1/2" and 3/4" off the outer tube of the telescoping shaft so that I could slide the parts together and make it short enough to install in the truck. You will see that the inner shaft piece had a plastic sleeve and curved spring to take up play between the pieces. I slathered the inner shaft piece with bearing grease prior to assembly. I also re-used this nice boot that was on it.
Here it is. Installed. and all fasteners tight. Without the rag joints, I may feel more road vibration. But I can accept that, knowing that I have something more solid that a rubber disc connecting my steering wheel to the steering box.