Steering Wheel Removal

Why a page on removing the steering wheel? Because, its a wierd old fashioned design with no builtin puller bolt holes like a modern one, and you'd like to perhaps get this brittle old thing off without destroying it!

I posted the question to willys tech, and got a variety of answers on how to do this which varied from, "use a heat gun on the wheel, and dry ice on the shaft", to "I wiggled it a little and it came off". The CJ3B page shows how to do it with a gear puller. I think this would work well. And in fact I have a gear splitter, but not one big enough. Also you have to be careful not to damage the top of the shaft. I ended up making one for nothing but 1 hours time out of stuff I had laying about.

My steering wheel was on tight, I tried the easy gentle methods first, and soaked the joint with Kroil for over a week. But in the end I needed the puller.

This is the assembled puller.

Here is a breakdown of the puller. It's made from 2" thick oak, and 5/8" thread rod. I'm a country boy and have lots of planks and such laying about but even a city guy can get good hardwood stock from a discarded pallet in back of Walmart. I used 5/8 rod cause it can take a lot of tourque. Forget using a 2x4 or other softwood. You need the stiffness of the oak.

The bottom "splitter" is made has a 1.5" hole bored in the center, then it was cut down the middle on the saw.ANother way to do this is cut two piece from a pallet leg, drill and bolt together like mine using 3/8" carriage bolts. Then bore the hole in the center. I used a hole saw in my drill press.

Here the "splitter" is assembled around the steering column.

Assembling the puller. NOTE: I have used some double sided tape to tape a 5/8" and 1/2" washer over the center of the head block. This provides a hard surface on the shaft and also creates a "well" to protect the brass horn button.

Here the puller is assembled. I had to tighten this up very tight and then rap the top with a hammer a few times to get the wheel to pop.