I'll preface this by saying I've done lots n lots of reading, looking at pictures and I'm impressed by all of you and what you've accomplished.
First post however and hoping to get some help.

I got a 92 XJ for my almost stepson and am working through some of the normal issues that a 16 year old vehicle with 106000 miles on it has.

The steering has some slop in it. I had my almost wife rotate the wheel and found that it was all coming from the steering column (not the column itself, but rather the shaft in side the column).

Came on here and did some searching and I ended up pulling the dash, column bolts and intermediate shaft in an effort to figure out what was going on.

When the column is in place and everything tight the shaft that's inside the column is protruding out too far. There's like a bushing/bearing or whatever that's supposed to ride on the plastic cup piece. If you push the shaft back in towards the column the play goes away and I think this is where it needs to be. However when you bolt everything up and connect the intermediate shaft from there to the steering box, it won't reach unless you pull that piece back out from where it's supposed to ride (up against the plastic cup/piece). Which of course puts me right back where I started. See photos below.

Not sure if I'm missing an adjustment here, or if the column is messed up and some internal parts need to be changed out??????

Any ideas would be appreciated. Sure would be nice if I'm missing something simple and stupid as opposed to having to pull the column.

Thanks for any an all help.

Oh yeah, I know the intermediate shaft is able to slide in and out about an inch or so. It's still not enough to make it all fit together properly.

Couple pictures too.

Where it should be.




Where I found it banging/clunking around.





Also snapped a photo of the underside of the steering column. I messed around with the four 13mm bolts on the column as well as the two 15mm bolts in hopes that I could make some adjustment, but it didn't seen to get me what I needed. If nothing else I hadn't seen a photo of this area in the other posts and thought it might help someone else when describing column issues.

Oh yeah, everything was nice n tight under the dash. No loose hardware here. I don't suppose this could be the loose tilt hardware down inside the steering column causing this?