Steering Wheel Ideas for the Black Pearl

Weather Channel says it's 5* cooler downtown at Sky Harbor, but out here on the outskirts of town, we don't have all the concrete and hardcore smog n' stuff, so our temps seem to spike higher and then drop off quicker on hot days...

I did find a three-spoke Grant wheel stuck on an old GM steering column that I was half-tempted to go with, looked just like the one pictured above, although the foam grip of the steering wheel was a little dry-rotted. I dunno ... I guess I might ask 'em what they want for it and if I can score it dirt-cheap, then the hell with it, I'll just throw that on with a Ford adapter, then buy a groovy horn button for it and call it done.

sub0ca said:

I was thinking of swapping out my steering wheel to something that looks like the mustang wheel but newer.. I like the new ford edge wheel.. Not sure it would swap out that easy? IT would look and feel awesome. Any advice here would be appriciated.

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Not sure what the column post looks like on the newer '05+ models VS the SN95 wheels, but I know the distance from the wheel to turn signal lever should be about the same, since they're both airbag wheels - it's when you go from airbag to non-airbag or vice-versa that it becomes an issue. You could pretty much look at the shape of the '90-'93 wheel's steering shaft and then if you can get a pic of a newer '05+ wheel with the airbag off, you could pretty much tell at a glance whether or not it'll fit onto the shaft.

Picked up a black four-spoke wheel from the same '80 (or was it a '79 or '82?) Capri that we got the rear bumper, grille, and trim pieces from for Lynn's car. It's actually got a splined mounting hole instead of the kinda oval-shaped hole that the later ones have. I learned that apparently the early Foxes don't share the same steering shaft as the later Foxes (I'm assuming the '85+ models are different), as the early ones have a splined shaft like a GM vehicle, and the later ones have that semi-idiot-proofed "two flats and two rounds" oval-shaped kind of post where the wheel can only go on two ways. If it turns out my '84 has the splined shaft, then my wheel selection is going to be drastically different than the bunch of wheels I was looking at before. I took a gamble on this one in that it may or may not fit because I honestly haven't pulled the center nut off my '84 wheel to see what kind of shaft it has - splined or not - so if it works, great, and if not ... oh well.

Weird thing about it, it doesn't appear that the thing actually has a horn button on the wheel, itself. Did the early Foxes have some other means of honking the horn, like pulling on the turn signal stalk or something weird like that? Because when I pulled this wheel off the column of the Capri, there was no clock spring or wires or even anything that it could possibly be hooked up to for a horn or anything.

Here's the little bugger all cleaned up and pretty-lookin':
View attachment 258656

Splined shaft for '79-'82 models; D-shaft for '83+ models. Never thought to research that before I picked it up.

Well, hell. Anyone want a Capri wheel?

Well, if all else fails, Lynn has said that I can have hers. Only thing is, I have to wait until she finally settles upon a particular wheel, and who knows how long that'll be. She doesn't want an airbag wheel of any kind, but she doesn't want another wheel that's going to fit all crappy on the column like the one she's got (fits too close to the turn signal), so I dunno WTF is left to choose from with that kind of search criteria, unless she has me change out the whole damned steering column and dash with an '87-'89 setup.

EDIT: Had to satisfy my own curiosity, because I'm stupid and hard-headed. Went out just now and pulled the wheel off. Yup, it's the D-style shaft, not the splined one. So ... yeah. The hunt for a wheel continues...