Steering couple not reaching

Sedanman said

take the bolts out of the lower bearing and use a pipewrench adjusted to the steering shaft size and tap it down with a hammer then tap the bearing back into place and put the bolts back in.

Click to expand...

The one thing I noticed is when I push the coupler back and off the steering box, it will only slide down about 1/2 ....I need it to go down about an inch at least. If I take the 2 bolts out of the bearing and tap down on the shaft .... will that break those nylon set screws on the collapsible column