Bushing or not?

So the bearing mentioned in this thread was ordered and arrived, my son removed the steering column and we attempted to install it. The problem is our column seems different then the ones that others have done, this inner tube pictured here comes out about a foot then gets stuck, we were reluctant to try to extract any further, I believe this is part of the collapse part of the column. If we push it back in we can not install the bearing, what is the procedure? Anyone run into this? 70 Duster floor shift 4 speed. Thanks

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