Lancia Motor Club

Not the nicest thing to happen but I can't complain about the timing. I was leaving a roundabout in my Fulvia Berlina S2 and I heard a bang and the steering column damper spring hit my foot and heyho no steering.   Luckily I was only doing about 25mph and did not hit anything managing to stop her in the middle of the road, then with the help of a couple of other chaps, me and my Missus pushed her where she wanted to go, luckily onto a wide verge.
I usually put my tool box in the car I am in but you guessed it, I didn't this time, so had to call a Pal out to bring some spanners.
It seems that the bolt which pins the top shaft to the lower one via splines in the UJ no longer wanted to hold it all together.
It was still tight but on taking it out, the bolt was quite badly damaged. Now, since I have owned the Berlina the steering column has not been touched but on re-assembly, it seems that the adjustable bracket holding the top section was not in the optimum position so with that, the damaged bolt and the pressure from the spring, the splined connection popped apart. To get home we left the spring off and I have found a better bolt in my stock of bits so when my Pal has a moment, we can re-assemble it with the spring and better bolt as it is a 2 man job due to the strength of that spring.
Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Not had this, but it is a struggle to reassemble. I seem to remember using 4 thick tie wraps to compress the spring. There should be a rubber gaiter that goes over so a bit like a Chinese jigsaw with the spring all the time trying to desperately uncompress. If anyone knows of an easier method please let me know!

If I remember correctly the end of the column shaft has a flat on it that must be aligned with the hole in the split yoke so the bolt can be fitted properly. Maybe in the past someone did not understand this and misaligned the coupling and not being able to fit the proper bolt used a smaller one and forced it through causing damage. Definitely needs further investigation as they may have done the same thing at the steering box!

Sorry this is for the steering box end.....

Thanks for the input guys, we managed to fit the spring back using Tim's tiewrap suggestion to compress it and eventually working out that we also had to take the steering wheel off before we could have enough of the lower end of the shaft sticking out to fit the compressed spring and get enough spline engaged and the new bolt fitted. A right fiddly job!