How safe is it to run an airbag steering wheel?

[89Mirageman]

I found a mint 3g eclipse GT leather steering wheel in the yard the other day and I want to put it in my colt. The airbag is still there and intact. Is it safe to run it with it not hooked up? Of course my car didn't come with any air bags at all and I don't want to go through the trouble of trying to make this one work.

 

[Boostdtalon]

You may be able to disassemble the wheel and remove the airbag.

 

[curtis]

Should be fine. As long as you have the wires all taped up. As for the hub it looks different than the evo wheels. Hopefully the center is steel and unbolts and you can adapt the colt or dsm if its the same to work. I have the jig I cnc cut for the evo wheels housing to bolt to while I weld on a dsm/vr4 to it but this may not help things. Get some better internal pictures and I'll see if I can help.

 

[89Mirageman]

Curtis, I'll have to double check again but I'm pretty sure it fit my colt's column perfect, the taper and the splines were the same. I would just need to rig up that brass part on the back from a 1g wheel so that the horn will work.

I really don't want to bother taking the airbag part out. I'd much rather leave it as it is or just sell it on ebay if its too much trouble to make it work.

 

[beaner]

Turbo Colt? They have a different spline count from 1g/2g/vr4.

 

[maroonmetallic]

Im sure Chris already knows about the steering column differences he is def. a regular on 4g61t as he has built at least one other CSM.

Good luck in your adventures. Like stated before, I think it would be fine as long as all needed wires were terminated w/ tape or heatshrink.

-Shawn

 

[Diego]

What would it take to make this work in the Galant?

 

[89Mirageman]

Yeah this is a base model colt that's in the process of getting swapped. Thanks for the advice guys, I'll heatshrink the wires and run it as it is.

 

[curtis]

Quoting Diego:
What would it take to make this work in the Galant?



It looks that this is a cast aluminum hub with a steel bushing pressed in. What you would have to do is get a 1G wheel and remove the splined center then take it to a machine shop with a lathe and have it turned down almost to the ID of the 3rd gen wheel. Then cool the piece and heat up the center of the 3G wheel and press in the new piece then tig weld into place. If it turns out it may be to small you could always have a steel bushing machined and pressed onto the VR4/1g splined piece then welded and machined to fit this. The dsm/vr4 piece has a large bottom then tapers up at an angle then small so thats maybe what you would have to do.


You can find pictures here in my old thread

click me

 

[89Mirageman]

Curtis, this wheel should fit a Galant with no modification at all. Like I said, it fits the splines perfect on my colt and a 1g dsm wheel also fits (which I know also fits GVR4's). The only real modification it needs is that brass ring on the back so that the horn will work. Here is a pic of the 3g and 1g eclipse hubs.





Here is a pic of my old evo wheel that I modded. I just cut the back piece off of a 1g dsm wheel with the brass ring in it. Epoxied it to the back of the evo wheel and attached the wire to the horn.

 

[89Mirageman]

A few pics with the airbag removed on the colts column

 

I was given your name as someone who would have a galant vr-4 ISC. do you have any available?

 

[Alainb7]

I do the same kind of upgrade in mine.

I want to kep my galant oem steering in case, so I take a 1G sterring as a donor for te horn contact ring.

I take a Eclipse 2G steering, cut out the contact ring and install the 1G on it and it work perfectly.

I leave the air bak in it but just cut all wire and tie it togeder and ground it to prevent any static electricityto pop out the air bag.

 

[iceman69510]

I have this steering wheel (3g) in both my vr4s. I just removed the metal disc behind the actual air bag. That is the inflator with the wire connections. With that gone there is no possibility of inflation.

You want the air bag in place otherwise the steering wheel seems empty.

I rigged one of mine with a horn ring from a junk VR4 steering wheel. the other I have not done yet.

And yet, fits right on the column splines, with no mods.

 

[Diego]

Iceman do you have pics of the wheel in car. Me an 89 have been messaging back and forth, I want to see a picture.

 

[iceman69510]

Maybe a bit too close up, but here you go.