Thread: pulling a 48 ford stering wheel

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Yeah that should do it Dave!
Sometimes it would feel good too!
Denny here is the pic of the wheel. I think I'm going to have to drill some holes in it, and then pass some bolts thru, put nuts behind, then proceed as described in the above link

Will do tomorrow morning, thanks and good to see you hanging around again. You were the first person to ever help me on this site. Steve.

Denny, won't that drive the one piece steering shaft into the box possibly damaging the internals?

Boy, you have gotten some very poor advice on how to remove your steering wheel. Obviously none of the posters have ever worked on a Ford column from '28-'48.

The hub is a tapered shaft (7 degrees) with a woodruff key holding the steering wheel hub from rotating on the shaft. It has a nut on the threaded portion of the shaft, just above the tapered section to hold everything together.

To Remove:

Loosen the nut until the flat surface of the nut is flush with the end of the steering shaft. This will protect the threads from being damaged. Using a brass or aluminum punch held against the end of the steering shaft, give the punch a good hard wrap with a hammer. This will "shock" the tapered sections apart. Sometimes applying some upwards pressure with your thighs against the steering wheel when rapping the punch will help break it loose. Once loosened, remove the nut and lift the steering wheel off. When re-installing, be sure that the woodruff key is in place.

We do the same trick to remove steering wheels from boats. Some come right off and some are corroded in place, so we remove the nut, soak em with blaster, and leave the nut partly on so the wheel doesn't come up and smack you in the teeth when it frees up. We have one guy pull up on it while another uses a block of wood or brass punch to smack the nut. They usually pop off after a rap or two.

I've done it by myself too by putting my knees under the wheel to exert upward pressure while I hit the nut. Once it pops off you can remove the nut the rest of the way. On ones that are really frozen it takes about 15 minutes to make a tool to shock them off. You simply weld an old 3/4 inch socket to an old end that goes in your air chisel, put a 3/4 inch nut inside the socket so the socket will only go so far onto the steering wheel nut, loosen the nut a little, have someone pull up while you vibrate the heck out of it, and it will come off this way, no question.

Don