goddamn. steering box is finally on its way back.
while i was fixing the window regulators (greasing the main pivot point of the big gear thing makes them move surprisingly well) I was contemplating installing central locking while I had the door cards off but decided against it, considering the state of the body in general.
At least got to finally use that butyl tape I bought back in 2021. Pretty fat rope/tape; you can stretch it out to 3-4 times its length and it's still plenty useable. The stuff is very forgiving to use in that even though I got a decent amount of dirt and shit on it, it was still very sticky and tacky. Got some 100 micron builder's plastic for pretty cheap and it worked out really well. The only problem would be trying to get it all off, the tape is really sticky and it'd definitely be very annoying to remove if you ever have to do some servicing for whatever reason.