steering wheel removal

[ben]

My steering wheel has been off piste for years , and for some reason it's started to annoy me again , i once tried to remove it to straighten it up but once i'd removed the nut it still wouldnt budge even by tapping the column thread (with some copper bar) so i gave up, so, is it as simple as removing the nut and lifting it off and turning it on some splines or is there more to it than that

[Linegeist]

The trade method is to rapidly 'slap'each side of the steering wheel rim alternately with the flats of your hands, working around the periphery. This twists the wheel mount on the splines and breaks any seal, along with loosening the boss on the splined taper.

Leave the nut on the shaft just a few turns in case the wheel comes off with a jerk (or because of one ) and, after a minute or so of Happy Slapping, the wheel will suddenly come loose and can be lifted off the column.

[ben]

cheers

[mat_fenwick]

Or (this is probably one of those tips that H&S people would frown upon) drive down a straight but bumpy road whilst pulling on the wheel. The vibrations through the steering column will help loosen it.

Again, keep the nut on a few turns and don't do this in the outside lane of the motorway in rush hour unless you really like living dangerously...

Bob's method is probably best.

[Linegeist]

And, with that, the thread also swerves, with total predictability, 'off piste'!

Superb stuff! I love this place.

[mat_fenwick]

I have visions of someone trying this tip, perhaps with the window down. Only to have the steering wheel fly off, through their hands and straight out of the car...

Imagine the claims form.

[rayfenwick]

...especially if it flew into the open window of an oncoming car, causing it to crash...

[Linegeist]

I have to say, many moons ago, I had a '65 Volvo 122 which, for some obscure reason, had a socking great spring behind the steering wheel. The wheel itself was about 2 foot in diameter and I needed to remove the thing after wheel alignment left it crooked.

Having completely taken off the securing nut (stupid), I proceeded to do the rather theatrical hand slap thing (much to the amusement of my friends also in the workshop at the time). My audience (whom I admit to trying to impress ) then gleefully fell about when the damned thing suddenly leapt off the steering column like a rabid flapjack in attack mode, and smacked me heartily in the mouth, drawing copious quantities of gore and leaving me with a split lip and a trout-pout worthy of a Scouse hooker for a week.

I suspect this prat thing's just a gift I naturally have. I now make sure not to fiddle with important nuts unless I know what they're holding .............

[JayW]

That'll have been part of the "collapsible" column... By collapsible they meant that the pinion floated on the rack so that as your flailing torso hit the steering wheel at 40mph the column could absorb some bone as the column was essentially pushed out the end of the steering box...

The spring was to help slow down the 2" movement and return the pinion back to the 'box after you'd gone through the windscreen so that it was easier to load the mangled remains onto a flatbed...

My granddad had an Amason when i was a kid... i preferred his mates Saab V4...

[Linegeist]

My granddad had an Amason when i was a kid... i preferred his mates Saab V4...

Ahhh yes! The Ford engine with the fibre timing gear (so badly designed that this was the only way Ford's engineers could stop the engine's timing gear howling like a dog with its nuts in a cat's jaws) - that'd shed its teeth with minimal provocation and, if you were really unlucky and driving at high revs, blow the guts out of the silencer box as it died by igniting a few cylinders and a manifold's-worth of fuel-air while the exhaust valves were open at the wrong time.

The bang was usually spectacular as I recall!

[electrokid]

(or because of one )

Had to read that a couple of times before the penny dropped - good when my brain finally found a gear in a box full of neutrals

Many moons ago I gingerly drove around an Austin 7 type of car - it was stopped at a T junction - the driver was fiddling around with the steering wheel - trying to see how it fitted back onto the column

[Linegeist]

I remember driving 20-odd miles home one evening in a Ford Anglia that had stripped its splines because of a loosening steering wheel - with a pair of VERY tightly applied mole grips as the only means of turning the steering (and a VERY tightly clenched sphincter attaching me to the seat as well!!).

It's the first and only time I've driven a car (badly) controlled by a tiller - and it was one of those memorable and laxative-substitute events that stay with you for life as a kind've mental scarring - and that returns at odd intervals as a panicky nightmare (when the mole grip invariably comes apart on a roundabout ). Some of the bodges we used to perform just to get us home (and workshop) defy modern belief (like the bent nail in a motorcycle chain which had snapped and the loop of rope through each front door window and tied onto the wiper arm because the motor had caught fire - the passenger did the wiping) that today would get you pulled over and tasered (if the local police are anything to go by).

When I think back to some of the amazingly stupid things I've done - and got away with - in my early life, I'm amazed I'm still here.

[mat_fenwick]

In the late 60s one of my father in law's mates had a LHD car - and for a giggle they would often drive around in it with the front seat passenger holding a fake steering wheel.
He would then make fake swerving motions to oncoming traffic, or pretend it had come off...

[Linegeist]

<snigger><chortle><guffaw> I'm afraid that's hit my childish-funny bone dead centre.