Steering Column

[Steve & Wendy <wendys@domain.elided>]

Happy New Year to all Stag Owners!

Can anybody offer some advice on repair of the steering column,
specifically:

I have dismantled the steering column in order to inspect/replace the
lower bearing. This is described by procedure 57.40.06 in the Repair
Operations Manual. The steering column has two outer sliding "tubes",
and to avoid slopiness between the tubes, some thin metal packing pieces
and other "fibrous" (?) or plastic packing are located in the area where
the tubes overlap. These packing pieces or spacers aren't shown or
mentioned in any of the manuals, but I know they are there because they
all came out while I was fidling with the column.

The question is: what packing should be used between these two tubes,
and how is it kept in place?  There is no secure way of fixing it in
place, but there are a couple of holes in the outer tube and it appears
that the original plastic packing may have been injected through these
holes. Sounds odd but I don't see how else it could have been done.

Thanks in advance for any help that can be provided.

Steve Smith
'73 Stag
Gaithersburg, MD, USA