I'd bet you could slide it up some, but it would just be a question of what you're willing to do to get it there. To my knowledge the only thing down there is a just a bearing to support the lower end of the shaft. Reason would dictate that the closer the bearing to the end of the shaft, the better off you'll be for rigidity, but I don't think moving it 0.5"-1" will really hurt anything. I got to have tons of fun with my car since I found out it had column shifted manual steering column when I went to do the swap (power steering as well). Ended up swapping the shaft with a manual one and pulling all the linkage out from inside the column for shifting stuff. I should really just buy the right column one of these days...