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06-19-2004, 08:04 AM

From the moment I sat in the driver's seat of my '04 W22 at the factory, I was not comfortable with my stock 14" steering wheel. After leaving the factory on the trip home, not only did it feel small, but I could not get the wheel tilted so that I could be comfortable and see all of the gauges. When I saw a post in this forum I knew right away I needed an 18" steering wheel.

On Friday my 18" VIP steering wheel purchased from Ron The Bus Nut arrived. Since I purchased this wheel after-market as opposed to from Workhorse, I had a number of options to choose from. I ended up with a black leather wrapped 18" steering wheel with a "GMC" horn button.

Total price, $105.68 including shipping.

The link above shows the standard rubber grip wheel for $79. I splurged and went with leather for $89.00. I had a choice of a number of horn buttons and I thought about "Freightliner" or "Spartan" as a gag but decided on "GMC". The horn button was $8.88 (included in the $105.68 total but specified separately). Although WH uses the VIP steering wheel, you can not purchase the WH horn button anywhere but from WH parts. Perhaps when my bank account replenishes I'll get the real thing from WH

I decided to go with black spokes rather than the standard WH silver since my unit has bronze dash panels with black buttons/knobs/dials. I didn't want to introduce a silver spoke wheel into the "motif".

Before starting, I pointed my wheels in a straight forward position and made the steering wheel look level.

Here is what I started with:

The first step was removing the horn pad which is held in place by friction (4 plastic tabs). It was a simple matter of gripping the pad from both sides and gently lifting.

There were two wires used for the horn. The black wire was permanently attached to the horn pad and had a spring clip grounding the other end into a hole in the old wheel. The red wire used a crimp style spade connector and simply pulled off the pad.

After loosening the nut on the end of steering post using a 13/16" socket (large spark plug socket), I then used a cheap steering wheel puller (Autozone or Advance Auto parts) to remove the old steering wheel. After a couple of turns on the puller, the wheel simply lifted off.

With the old wheel removed, I was left with just the steering column with horn wire:

Next I lined up the new wheel so it was straight, threaded the horn wire through the pre-drilled hole and gently pushed the wheel onto the steering column.

At this point you can already see the better view of the gauges.

Re-using the same steering column nut, I torqued it to 30 foot-lbs. per the service manual.

Next the horn wire was pushed onto the horn button connector. No soldering or new connectors required.

The horn button was lined up straight and gently pushed into place using my fingers. Here is the finished product. Notice the unobstructed view of the gauges.

Just for comparison, I placed the old wheel upside down onto the new wheel:

All in all it took me less than 15 minutes start to finish. One more project done

EDIT - BTW - it had made no difference in rotating the driver's seat while parked. On this model, I never could rotate the driver's seat more than ~100 degrees clockwise with the 14" wheel and have found no change with the 18" wheel in place.

06-19-2004, 08:04 AM