DEVICE FOR BLOCKING THE ROTATIONAL MOTION OF A VEHICLE'S STEERING COLUMN

摘要

A motor-vehicle steering-column lock has a bush carried on the steering spindle and formed with a plurality of angularly equispaced axial ribs of the same thickness and having sides that define recesses each angularly twice as wide as the rib thickness. At least three elongated locking bolts lying in respective planes and sliding longitudinally independently relative to one another and generally radially with respect to the axis have generally identical and mutually parallel ends of a width substantially equal to the rib thickness. Thus in one locking position the ends of two adjacent bolts are received by one of the recesses while the end of the third of the bolts rests on an adjacent one of the ribs and in another locking position the end of a central one of the bolts rests on one of the ribs while the ends of the other two of the bolts straddle the one rib and are received in respective recesses flanking same. The bolts are displaced the bolts parallel to their planes and radially inward such that in any relative angular position of the bolts and the column at least one of the bolts enters into one of the recesses and one other of the bolts radially engages one of the ribs and is held thereby out of any of the recesses for retaining the column in an angularly blocked position.