Just went thru this on my 54 Manhattan...thought the dash needed to be repainted...was a bit more to it than just drop it out.
As with you, I had to pull the steering wheel, needed to get horn working. Thought all good, and went to try turn lights, only to find I had to pull the wheel back off and tear into the turn indicator switch. That's a rather impressive bit of engineering and manufacturing.. Mechanical cancelling of brake and turn lights on rear, fronts are on a different circuit...
Couple of notes:
To pull the bearing off the steering column, you must pull the arc clip on bearing out of housing (turn sig. casting), then slide the housing to the front (towards dash) to access a roll pin that holds the brg. id race to the steering shaft. drift that out, and pull the bearing off end of shaft. Then you can get the switch bracket/housing off.
The switch has 6 wires, 4 small (1/16" dia.) balls, 3 copper sliders with 3,3,3 small coil springs. So if you want to take the switch off housing, do it inside a box, so parts don't go too far. I had the ears broke on the fiber/micarta/phenolic cover plate. Ears broke allowed the contacts to not stay in contact. Wound up glassing those on with epoxy and some very fine glass cloth, the composite repair did more to keep ear in position, than it did to hold them on...didn't bond to micarta very well..
Also, take a good look at the connector on end of the leads, they can go open when a lead breaks.., but also can be a good place to jumper leads to check rest of wiring to rear...front...
All that's on the column... rest of the dash is challenging, too...
Glove box was broke, glassed up on outside, then had to get clearance on radio speaker once back.. Wires to clock didn't pull thru hole in dash, so had to unsolder the light ends, and clip those to the clock... Lots of fun!
Also, had to drill and retap a couple of the 10-32 (24?) screws that came from backside...
Yet, in today's plastic world, it sure gives one appreciation of the job done "back in the day" with materials available...and it FIT!
A couple of pics of the dash refinishing attached, if I can do that.
Bob L.
