On the JD units, you will always have the tilt feature, although as mentioned above, the column does then become heavy. I did what I do with all of the units with autosteer- lift the whole thing up about 6 inches and just leave it in that position all the time while running it in the field.

As far as the telescope function goes- if you shim the unit properly, you will still have the function, but will need to remove the shims every time you wish to move it in or out. The shims are simple L-shaped flat plates that go between the brown and black plastic on the JD column. When shimmed properly there is no twisting on the tractor-type setups. The combine units were another story.