Ok so here's what I have going on. Ill start by saying my car is a 396 with power steering and has the comfort grip wheel with center horn button. Prior to disassembly, I marked the wheel, hub, and column with tape just to make sure I put all back together and aligned the way it came off. I dove into the steering column to change out my ignition switch and took pictures as I went along. All went as expected and the new switch works. I put the turn signal plate back in as well as the horn contact assembly in exactly as it came apart. Made sure tape marks all lined up which they did. All good to this point.
So here's the issue, The back of the steering wheel has a lip where one of the spokes overlaps the other two. That is normal. The hub has a notch in it that accepts that lip. Normal there too. So when I went to put the wheel back I put the wheel lip into the hub notch and saw that the wheel was now 180 degrees out. Rather than the wheel spokes being correctly positioned like a "Y" its now is like an inverted Y which is incorrect. I must not have noticed that the previous owner positioned the wheel correctly visually wise, but it was not in the corresponding notch in the hub. Its obvious that the splines on the steering shaft only permit the hub to go on one way which makes the wheel only go on one way. They cannot be clocked.
So my question here is.. what was installed incorrectly? Rag joint out 180? Spline coupler on box out 180? Just from researching, it appeares that the rag joint and coupler on end of engine side of shaft are splined only to go on one way so I cant clock it correctly from there. Any thoughts on how to correct this?
Sorry for long post..
