Steering Column Upper Bearings

[drubie]

The lower of the two upper bearings in my 1982 Cherokee fell to bits - scared the daylights out of me.

The plastic race is completely toast, all the ball bearings are gone. The upper bearing *might* be salvageable.

Local bearing place just shrugged when I told them it was a common GM steering column that I am pretty sure was used in local Holdens / Chevies etc. I only see one steering column bearing listed at the site and I'm pretty sure it's not the ones that sit inside the tilt mechanism (where mine are gone).

Anybody know where/how to get the bearings, what to order or what to ask for? Are they a common size and I can just order them from a bearing place?

[drubie]

Just to partially answer my own question:

Is GM part 7844651 what I want? It has two bearings and the little lock rack / spring that drives the ignition stuff. I have a 1" threaded bicycle headset bearing in there for the moment but it's not quite the right size (as a get you out of trouble fix though, it works well enough)

[Ryan]

ours is for the lower part of the column. You can probably salvage the same bearing up top from any chevy column in the mid-late 70's as I believe they were all the same (our column is a GM based column)