Power to Manual Steering Questions

[AMC Diplomat]

Why does the shaft on your car look funky like its too short and not aligning well with the power box. Looks like its missing the retainer clip because of it being out too far and the top of the lower portion looks beat on. Even with the external clip off they wont come out that far unless the inner part is depressed to remove it all. I think.

Is this why your changing things?

Let me resize a couple pics to post.

Thanks for the pics! Yeah there's something very wrong with the current set up. I'm dumping it all for a manual setup because it's all junk anyways. I haven't even messed with it beyond taking pics and measurements.

I have no idea why it looks so short. Something is definitely wrong there. This 78 magnum shaft with the coupler lines up with your measurements too, so I'm fairly confident this will work out. Now I just need to find more time to take it all apart

 

[AMC Diplomat]

The more I think about this, the more I wonder what kind of hack job someone did when the column was replaced. The car was stolen and the column broken. The previous owner's solution was to have the column replaced. I have the receipts for that and here's a pic of the interior showing a mismatched column from when I bought the car, before the green interior:

I'm beginning to think I should cut out this column entirely and try and source another one. Because I have my doubts that any of this was done right, especially with that messed up coupler. The column was replaced in 2016. It shouldn't have gone to hell this fast. The car didn't even move much until I bought it in 2022.