Wednesday, April 29

New steering wheel & homemade hub!

I ended up pulling this steering wheel off of my daily driver because it would not de-activate the turnsignals when turning. Its a great match for this build because of the low cost of the wheel, and the DIY hub. I think it definitely looks more at home in this car!I have copy/pasted the original post from my other blog below so you can see how I created the hub.

So, I found an old steering wheel at the Junkyard. I really liked the retro look of it, so i bought it for less than $6!





I brought it home and began looking for a hub that would work. Everything i found was $$, and I really didn't feel like paying $60 for a new MOMO hub. I grabbed the stock steering wheel, and decided to cut it up into a custom hub/adapter.




I began by separating the wheel from the stock aluminum hub. I had to cut and grind a lot of parts off including the airbag wiring and horn wiring.

After about 30 mins of cutting, I spent some time sanding the surface smooth on my belt sander. I then drilled 3 holes on the hub and 3 matching holes on the steering wheel. THis is the finished product.

Here is a side shot of the clearance i have between the wheel and the column. I'm really happy with the final product and the way it makes the car feel even more responsive.



I used some stainless nuts and bolts to install the wheel. I am still planning on refinishing it, and wiring up the horn.


Autox Video

Well we took a bunch of video footage during the challenge, but I've been too busy to compile it and convert it and re-size it.... I had some spare time today, so I created this short video of one of our autox runs.



Turbo BMW e30 at the 2008 GRM Challenge autox from Carlos Mendez on Vimeo.