Bad back back sliding.

Hello chaps, I’ve cricked my back doing a job for friends. This now means I can’t get my head into the footwell to find out where a circlip has come from.
I took the old fixed steering column out of the f & replaced it with an adjustable offering from a tf.
All went well plus I had the opportunity to tidy up stray wiring that had insinuated its way back & forth across the fuse box. If you do this mod do make sure you have the matching ECU.
So I’m tidying up the detritus that collets after a job & this bloody thing lay on the carpet under the first universal joint / splined shaft at the bottom of the column.
Give a bit of time I’m sure I’d find out where it comes from, it might not even be associated with the column, but if I know exactly where it’s from I’ll not be in pain for as long.

Sir Clip of Shaft!
Not sure of where that little bastard has come from but you may be lucky, it may have been one lost by a previous poor bastard wedged in the footwell, when the thing took off to buggery and couldn’t be found, so he got another……" the problem is you don’t know this for sure and you should determine that it’s not something safety essential
Rather than crawling about trying to find it, I suggest consulting the diagrams in the workshop manual to determine from whence it has launched

Did you find it in the footwell or left over on the bench after the column was swapped ?

My guess would be from the front of the column. It holds the front of the outer tube in place. You will need to remove the steering wheel, clockspring and stalk assembly to get to it.

As soon as i can take a break for a few mins I will just measure one I have here to make sure it is the right one

Thank you both & I didn’t think NaN will be too put out if I single out Cobbs, whose got a bit of catching up to do.
If you end up with a pacemaker we’ll have something else in common.
Right, I’ve answered my own question. The other day we talked about pedal bushes & about ten minutes after I pressed send I was contacted by a chap who wanted me to make some bronze bushes.
Obviously yes (old rope & money).
To refresh my memory & because I hadn’t played with it for a while, I turfed out my endoscope camera from its hiding place, connected it to my netbook & with the camera on end of a two foot grabbing tool & me on a deck chair, I poked the camera into the footwell. The first object to hove into view was the brake pedal, one of the trunnions had a circlip, similar to the one illustrated & the other trunnion had nothing. Could that be it do you think & do you recon I’ve been lucky? Especially as the next move would have had to be a strip down.
M

The brake trunnion definitely sounds the most likely home for that circlip

The circlip I described at the front of the steering column is over 2 centimetres wide so it cannot be that.