Thread: pulling a 48 ford stering wheel

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I need to pull my steering wheel off the 48 ford truck but for the life of me can't figure out how they ever got them off. A new conventional puller won't work because the wheel has no bolt holes to thread into. Anyone have any sugestions short of cutting it off?

dynamite????

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

And if you take one off a tractor---it is very important to put the nut on so when you hit the shaft you don't do a rearward somersault when the wheel pops off

Thank you all for the advice. It would seem there was no set way of doing this back in 48 without the chance of incuring damage to the steering box or wheel. In 49 they changed to a straight spline I believe, and some wheels I've seen have bolt holes for wheel pullers, which may be newer wheels like the reproduction ones availible for this truck.
Frisco you wrote
"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."
Do you mean using a large diameter punch that sits on the nut, or a thin diameter punch that goes down into the hollowed out section of the shaft, inside and below the nut itself?
Hope that makes sense. Thanks.

Might want to cosider taking the shaft off at the box before you start whacking things.... I just never liked the idea of hammer blows transferring all the way into the steering box....a crack in the worm gear could result in some really scary handling issues later on when it decides to break!!!!! For me it kind of rates right up there with smacking a crankshaft with a hammer on my list of things not to do.....

Originally Posted by stovens

Frisco you wrote
"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."
Do you mean using a large diameter punch that sits on the nut, or a thin diameter punch that goes down into the hollowed out section of the shaft, inside and below the nut itself?
Hope that makes sense. Thanks.

I actually use a piece of copper flat stock that is 1/2" X 1" X 6" long. Over the years it has become somewhat mushroomed on the ends, but still works well. I used the term "punch" because that would be a more familiar term to everyone rather than saying to use a piece of flat stock.

The one end of the "punch" should be flush against the flat surface of the nut and steering shaft end when being struck. You do NOT want anything in the hollow center section of the steering shaft when striking. The reason the nut should be flush with the end of the shaft is to prevent the shaft from mushrooming when being struck. If that occurs the threaded portion will be messed up and in need of thread repair.

A couple of good whacks should do the job.

The main thing I learned here is that the tilt columns are more fragile. I recall taking the wheel off a '47 Ford and it was not bad, just a little penetrating fluid, move the nut up flush and tap it, but I would do the same on my tilt wheel that needs to be recentered so thanks for the warning. Actually I found that you can rent various pullers from AutoZone, pay the price and return for a full refund or keep it if you want. Recently I installed a new wheel on my Ididit GM-style tilt wheel and tightened the column nut down after I tightened the set screw down at the Vega box spline and it sat there fine, but after about five minutes or more it went "whammo" and I thought I had busted the splined end of the column at the bottom. After checking things out and worrying that I have busted the Vega box I figured out that the fiberglass boddy had been scrunched down by tightening the column nut but the spline was new and tight and then suddenly the spline seated. I was able to tighten the column nut more. Then again there is some difference in length of the column when the tilt bends so apparently there needs to be some slight play in the mount for the tilt?? That is the only explanation I have because I went to the trouble to reseat the grooved knob on the end of the splined shaft into the Vega box. Just chatting here about something I didn't understand at first. I would guess that on a '48 Ford the all metal body and straight column would not give that problem. Hey, if I had been able to find a real steel early Ford I would not have to learn all this modern stuff!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder