A better solution is needed using a proper sealed bearing, with the goal of maintaining a stock appearing steering column. The first concept was a sealed needle bearing running directly on the stock steering shaft - a simple and compact solution that would look stock, but a bearing directly on the non-hardened shaft ran an unacceptable risk of vibration causing the bearings to gall on the shaft and possibly seize.
The easy solution is to machine an external collar to hold a standard sealed ball bearing, but this would not meet the requirement that the end result should appear stock. Unfortunately, there is no standard sealed ball bearing that would fit internally, however I did locate some double sealed, non-standard, 25mm ID x 40mm OD x 12mm ball bearings that would work.
It is necessary to machine the stock 1” shaft to fit the 25mm bearing and bore the outer pipe sleeve .030” to the bearing OD. A collar was machined to preload the bearing and centre the spring. The stock spring, spacer washer, and snap ring is used, and with the snap ring in the stock groove, the column appears stock.
Both my cars are early MKI Tigers, and use the same spring arrangement on each end of the shaft. The later Tigers used a different arrangement on one end of the shaft, however a similar strategy can be used.
The machine work was about 1 - 1 1/2 hours, and I bought a few extra non-standard metric bearings if anyone wants to give it a go