[00:02] going to show you how to install a quick release steering wheel in your track car and I'm going to cover everything you need to know from start to finish in watching this video you'll be able to install your very own quick relase
[00:15] steering wheel safely and properly in your car now you might be wondering what does a quick release steering wheel do and is it actually necessary so let me you're going to be drifting there's a good chance you're going to need a roll
[00:28] right here so you can't slide in and out of the car like you used to with the car getting in and out very difficult on top of that we have a racing seat and it's a Halo racing seat to protect our necks in case of an accident this is a fixed
[00:43] bucket seat it doesn't move it's bolted to the chassis and that makes it really mean look at this look at the space that you have here that is it so you need to spot and that could get very dangerous if you need to get out of the car
[00:56] quickly well I know what let me show you all right so let's get in the car and this adds to the difficulty I have to readjust my legs and my body that way I make sure you don't smack your head against that roll cage good now getting
[01:11] out is just as hard what I like to do is sit on the cage first and then get one leg out and then get the other leg out and you can see again the steering wheel think that demonstration pretty much speaks for itself there's just not a lot
[01:24] stock steering wheel that isn't removable so a quick release will make it quicker and easier to get out of the car it'll be more elegant and it'll be a lot safer now speaking of safety what I'm about to say is very very important
[01:38] but it's the truth and I need you guys to listen up so if your car is going to be used on the street it's a street car and it comes with an airbag that airbag should not be removed please please please do not remove the airbag these
[01:53] cars with airbags in them have crash structures that are designed to work along with the airbag if you remove it you could seriously get hurt or killed it takes one accident to change the rest of your life it's not worth it so
[02:05] instead what you could do to have a custom steering wheel is send your stock stuff like add carbon fiber look at this blue carbon fiber in here this looks absolutely gorgeous this is the Delo steering wheel they added my logo at the
[02:18] bottom and it maintains the stock airbag if we take a look at this one this is the steering wheel for the drift sting it has an RPM light at the top that's really cool almost like a Ferrari or an F1 car or something it has the stitch in
[02:30] the carbon fiber and again we maintain the stock airbag that's very important something unique something custom something different if your steering the bottom and make it flat like that so that's a really good option for the cars
[02:44] now if you have an older car that doesn't come with an airbag or you have a dedicated track car like this with all the safety equipment a roll cage 6o harness we have our helmet our neck restraint device a racing seat all this
[02:58] an airbag and a quick release is actually a good option so please please please if you have a stock airbag do not remove it it's very important I know you see people running no airbag and quick releases on the street but it's not a
[03:11] mention that real quick because safety guys the best information so you can make your own decisions now with that you need to get this job done and install your very own quick release
[03:25] steering wheel as always we're using common hand tools so you can get this done at home yourself no problem we're going to be using medium strength thread come loose after we install it if you're going to be installing a horn which I'll
[03:38] trick on using these breadboard connectors to connect directly to your I'll show you that and now there are three main parts to installing a quick release the first part is the hub adapter this is specific to your vehicle
[03:53] so this is specific to BMW they make them for all different makes and models then we have our quick release adapter which mounts to this and then we have our steering wheel which mounts to the quick release adapter now I have two
[04:05] differences between different steering wheels so you could pick the right one for your application now with steering wheels there's no standardization there's no FIA certification there's no SFI certification they're talking about
[04:17] time of this filming so the manufacturers could build whatever they want and there's no crash testing or anything it's very important that you buy a brand that you trust I know OMP makes our racing seat they make our fire
[04:29] fire suppression system they're a well-known racing brand and this is a on your steering wheel don't get a no-name brand and here is why so this is unbolted his old quick relase steering
[04:43] wheel and he was trying to get the hub off by pulling on it and this happened oh that's not good oh no no what now that was just pulling on it
[04:56] could be much higher this steering wheel definitely shouldn't break that easily so it's very important to get a highquality steering wheel and the last install a push button like this on your steering wheel for a line lock for
[05:11] nitrous for twostep or in our case we're going to use it for radio communications and then talk to the team in the pits and then we also have one of these hangers which will mount to the roll cage so we could hang our steering wheel
[05:23] to link all these tools and products in the description so you can easily find them and one last thing we need to get our safety glasses on beautiful so let's get started and the first thing we need to do is remove the stock steering wheel
[05:37] steering wheel there are two quick things we need to do first grab your key and put it in the Run position that way we could turn the steering wheel and straighten it out it's very important that your steering wheel is straight so
[05:50] when we install the new steering wheel it goes on straight and not crooked and key out and then you turn the steering wheel just a little bit and it locks in place and now this is locked in and won't turn by accident it also makes
[06:04] easier when this is locked so with our steering wheel straight you can see our tires are straight as well now what we're going to do is disconnect the because we're going to be removing the airbag and anytime you touch the airbag
[06:18] you always want to disconnect the battery and more specifically you want battery and this is a 10 mm nut so loosen it up and then pull the cable off and move it off to the side so it can touch the battery post by accident and
[06:31] now our batteries completely disconnected now 15 to 20 minutes later completely discharged and we could safely remove our airbag so to do that steering wheel there's going to be two holes you can see right there we have
[06:46] on the opposite side and these holes give you access to either screws or in the case of BMW they like to use Springs so let me show you how to remove it so into the hole on the side of the
[07:00] inwards against the spring inside the steering wheel and then this side of the airbag should come loose and now we could go and do the same thing on the other side push the screwdriver into the hole and then push inwards against the
[07:12] spring and pull the airbag out like that now with the airbag loose there are two to be removed so to get these off use your flathead screwdriver and pop the plastic retaining clip up like that and then we can pop the whole clip up and
[07:25] for the other connector pop the plastic retaining clip Up and then we could remove the whole clip from the back of the airbag and now our airbag is free have one more angle with the airbag removed you can see right there is the
[07:38] spring and then right up in this corner that is where our screwdriver is going push the spring just like that and you can see the spring is moving over and the spring all the way over like that so
[07:52] airbag from your car now not everybody drives a BMW so how do you remove it from another car well let me show you so this Toyota is a perfect example of how to remove most airbags so you can see this trim piece right here this needs to
[08:04] somebody has already done that in the past and damaged it and a trick so we don't damage it even more is cover your screwdriver in electrical tape and then won't damage the plastic so now with that removed we have access to the bolt
[08:17] we need to unscrew right there so let's break this bolt loose good and many way you can actually see it's held in by a plastic keeper to prevent the bolt unscrewed all the way now we can go onto the other side of the steering wheel and
[08:31] do the same exact thing carefully pop out that plastic trim then loosen up the bolt and now the airbag can carefully come out so we can remove the wires just like the BMW use a flathead screwdriver to pry the plastic tab on top of each of
[08:44] the connectors and then both connectors will come right out and then on this ground wire which comes right off and now we can remove the airbag so with the airbag removed a safety tip when working with airbags always place the airbag
[08:58] somewhere facing up never face it down if you face it down like this and it goes off for whatever reason it's going to shoot out but if you face it up and it goes off the airbag will just explode and you'll be fine but we don't have to
[09:11] worry about it the airbag is not going off it's disconnected you'll be fine so similar it is to remove airbags on other cars now to remove the steering wheel all you need to do is unscrew this bolt right here so let's head back to the BMW
[09:24] and remove our steering wheel all right now back in the BMW the steering wheel is held on by that one bolt right there it's a 16 mm and there's also a couple electrical connectors connected that we need to remove that way we can take the
[09:36] wheel off and this is actually a good time for me to explain how the horn works that way you know how to wire in your horn now I reconnected the battery real quick so I could show you how this horn works so this metal plate right
[09:48] would press on the airbag to press on the horn so here's what happens watch the horn so here's what happens watch this so when this metal plate contacts the metal underneath it creates a closed circuit so electricity could flow and
[10:02] right over here is an electrical connector and that connects to this another electrical connector and that connects to that metal plate so we need these two wires to complete our circuit for our horn so our wire right there is
[10:15] easily identifiable we can see exactly where that goes It goes into the last pin on that yellow connector so that's nice and simple now this one we have to remove that way we could see where it goes so let's remove the wires from this
[10:28] remove this tape holding the wires together so with the tape removed from the wires if we follow that brown and orange wire right look at that right next to the brown and black wire we were just looking at so if we take a closer
[10:41] look the brown and orange and the brown and black are the two wires at the end here those are the two wires we need to use to connect to our horn so what we yellow connector might as well get this one out of the way as well and we'll
[10:55] connected to each one of those pins it doesn't matter which color goes to which good now we have our two breadboard jumper wires and now if we touch the ends here it should honk let's listen all right so those are the two
[11:10] wires we need to connect to our horn on the quick release and that's all there is to figureing out how to make your horn work nice and simple and I'll show quick release in for now we could remove these and let's remove this 16 mm bolt
[11:24] get a ratchet on that bolt and I have an extendable ratchet which is nice because it gives you that extra leverage to break that bolt loose now we can remove the bolt the rest of the way by hand good so with the bolt removed let's give
[11:37] that's all there is to removing a bolt a couple electrical connectors and you're good to go now this right here is your clock spring so if you ever need to replace this that's how you get to it
[11:50] you do not want this to spin luckily on the BMW it locks into place when the wheel is removed but on other cars this doesn't lock into place so this could Spin and if it does you could easily damage the internal wires it has to stay
[12:02] in place do not spin this at all now unfortunately not every steering wheel comes off this easy some of them you need one of these this is a steering description to where you could easily get this it's inexpensive or you could
[12:16] rent this for free at many part stores and for some cars you need to have a steering wheel pull cuz the steering wheel is pressed onto the Hub here so works on the drift sting first screw in the bolt that holds the steering wheel
[12:28] in just a few threads so the puller has something to push against next find the in the holes in the steering wheel and you can see these bolt holes built into work with a puller now your pull comes with a bunch of different attachments in
[12:42] attachment which will fit nicely over our bolt then we could grab our two bolts and tighten them down by hand so we don't cross thread them now we could start tightening this down which should pull the steering wheel right off and
[12:56] with that pop the steering wheel is now loose and we could remove the ER also that's all there is to removing a steering wheel that's press fit on okay are almost done all that's left is getting our new steering wheel on and
[13:11] that will start with our Hub right here which slides right over the splines on our steering shaft just like that and we'll bolt it down but first you can see it's hard to get access to our clock spring in here so what we're going to do
[13:23] is put our wires on these pins so we can wire up our horn so let's get the breadboard connector on the last pin on the right and make sure it clicks in breadboard connector on the pin right next to that and again make sure it
[13:35] completely necessary I like to make sure these connectors don't come out so I'm tape which you can just drip onto the connector like that and that'll Wick into the surrounding area and it'll hold these connectors in so for sure they
[13:49] won't pop out good and with both of those wires connected now we could get our adapter on here and fish those wires through just like that and real quick I wanted to show you that the steering shaft has splines and so does our hub
[14:03] very important you can see it says top right there we want this hole to be facing straight up so adjust the splines so that this is straight up that way our then once it's aligned push it onto the splines good so with our Hub completely
[14:19] seated and it's straight now what we can do is grab our bolt and get some medium and this is going to prevent the bolt from backing out due to vibrations which would definitely not be good so Hand tighten the bolt all the way down and
[14:32] torque it to your car's spec which in this case is 46 ftlb for this BMW good so with that torque down now we need to connect our quick release Hub but first on the back here we have two wires for our horn which we need to
[14:46] back of our quick release Hub we have a male and female blade connector so I got a male and female blade connector so that we could connect it to our wires here so let's cut the ends off these wires then we want to strip our red wire
[15:00] so let's pull the insulation off the wire to expose the metal underneath good and now we can get our female blade connector put it in the crimper and put the wire into the connector and crimp down on that connector like so and you
[15:13] on the wire to make sure it won't come out and this is good so let's do the black wire again strip the insulation away then put the wire into the blade connector and finally crimp it together and give it a good pull to make sure the
[15:26] connectors crimped up on now we could connect our quick release Hub so let's connect these wires just like that and just like that
[15:38] beautiful you want to make sure that these wires don't have any exposed metal against here you don't want to have any shorts against each other and those are both protected by these sleeves so then what we're going to do is tuck our wires
[15:50] in and set up our quick release Hub like that now you can see the top of the there that means that one should be facing up and it is then we could get a screw with a little bit of medium strength thread locker and thread in our
[16:04] place now just to let you know these screws did not come with the quick pick up your own screws these are M5 and I ended up getting the m5- 16 so they're length I'll leave a link to these in the description so now we just want to hand
[16:20] tighten all six of these bolts to the hub like so now you want to tighten all these bolts down in a crisscross pattern to seat this evenly and when you're make them super tight but you definitely want to Snug them up the thread Locker
[16:32] just tighten each one so they're snug beautiful and now our quick release Hub is installed next we can install the second part of our quick release which is this quick release Hub so you can see there is a DOT right there that dot has
[16:46] you know it's on straight so now that is in there it's not coming loose and to get it off pull that back and it comes off and finally will bolt right right up to that Hub now
[17:00] we do have a button Mount right here that we need to go and install first so that'll go on like that and then our steering wheel will go right on like that so just align those holes and get all six of the screws hand tightened
[17:13] some medium strength thread Locker on them that way we know they won't back out due to vibrations once hand tightened go back and snug those screws seat the steering wheel against the
[17:25] quick release Hub and finally we have one last thing to do and that is install our horn now the back of the horn has two male ends again it doesn't matter which connector goes to which but as you can see we have a female which will work
[17:38] here but we have a male end here so we need to cut this and crimp on another male connector then we could strip the insulation off the end of the wire and then we could get our female blade connector and crimp it on just like that
[17:52] now let's give it the old pull test and this is good so let's get both of our be be sure to push both of these connectors on nice and tight like so and then finally we could push the horn into place on the steering
[18:06] wheel okay so with the battery connected let's try this out the horn works perfect and it disconnects look at that perfect and it disconnects look at that that is
[18:22] that button so we have a button here for our comms or whatever you want to use it for but real quick I did get multiple steering wheels so I can show you how to pick out the correct steering wheel for your application so let me show you real
[18:34] should look for when picking at a steering wheel I'm going to quickly for most track cars you're going to want a steering wheel that has good grip and suede gives you that grip but there are situations like with drifting where you
[18:46] your hands and leather gives you some grip and it also gives you some slip and for our Wheel tohe racing we're going to be using suede next we have shape and steering wheels come in all different shapes but there are two common ones the
[19:01] most applications you're probably going to want the round one especially if you're making more than 180° turns with the steering wheel but if your car is leg room you might need a cut off bottom to give you more leg room that's not a
[19:15] problem with our car so we're going with a round one next we have the diameter of the wheel the stock wheel is 380 mm in diameter and our aftermarket wheels 350 smaller now a smaller steering steing wheel is more sensitive so for every
[19:30] you're going to turn the car more with a smaller wheel than with a bigger wheel the downside is with a smaller wheel you have a little bit more steering effort have to be careful in this case we do have power steering so it's not a big
[19:43] deal we rather have quicker steering so a smaller wheel works better now for a steering it makes it easier to steer with a bigger wheel because it gives you you turn the steering wheel you turn it less than with a smaller steering wheel
[19:57] runs or maybe drag racing you don't want to have very high sensitivity a larger steering wheel might be better so again it depends on your application next we from the mounting surface to the steering surface and you can see this is
[20:12] a deep dish wheel now compare that to our other wheel and you can see our mounting surface and our grip surface are almost even it does have a little bit of a dish but not a lot so let me show you why this is important now since
[20:24] bolted to the chassis doesn't slide like a normal seat the only way to change the me is to change out the steering wheel with a different dish so what's the steering wheel all you need to do is force yourself into the back of the seat
[20:39] and stick your arms up on top of the wheel and right where the wheel meets your arm it should be at your wrist just like that that's perfect then you could your Bend in your elbow you want a little bit of a Bend like that you don't
[20:53] want to be all the way tucked in so this is perfect for me now what about about our deep dish wheel if we install the deep dish wheel check this out you can all the way over here that's too close this isn't good also when I'm 9 and
[21:08] three my elbows are tucked into my body and you can't steer like this so this deep dish is no good and that's exactly why we're going with a shallow dish steering wheel now the last thing to look for is the bolt pattern of your
[21:20] important cuz different steering wheels have different bolt patterns and depending on what steering wheel you get means you have to get the correct quick release Hub that matches that bolt pattern and the correct hub adapter
[21:32] which matches the bolt pattern now these are the three most common bolt patterns on which brand you choose you need to make sure that you get a hub adapter and quick release adapter that fits that steering wheel so just keep that in mind
[21:45] out the best steering wheel for your application let's finish up this video by installing our push button for the nitrous for the line lock for our radio out of the car I'll show you the difference because the difference is
[21:58] huge okay so now we want to get the button in the holder so let's Slide the wire all the way down until the button is seated in the holder like that next we want to get the washer and two Jam nuts on the back of the button to hold
[22:10] it in place so get those over the wire and slide them down to the button and way down and tighten it down with a wrench good now let's get the second Jam nut and tighten it down against the first nut like so and then hold the
[22:23] first nut in place as you tighten the second nut to jam them together good and can see we have these two holes here and that's where the wires get held in place so get a zip tie and we want to zip tie that wire in place so it doesn't get
[22:37] yanked on all right so now we have our button installed let's get our steering wheel in the car and let me show you how this works okay so let's hook up our button to our communication radio now our old comms button is connected to our
[22:49] shifter right here but now we realize this isn't the best spot because in our hand off the steering wheel and that isn't a good thing when you're racing so the wired to the old button runs up behind the dash to this connector right
[23:01] here so let's disconnect our old comms button and connect our steering wheel button and Tuck this wiring behind the dash out of the way so now with this installed the problem we have is our wire which is designed to stretch and
[23:13] also wrap around the wiper stock and that wouldn't be good so to fix that the cable to the bottom of our plastic trim right here so let's remove the trim so to get this off we have two clips under here one here and one here that
[23:27] will come right out so take a small screwdriver and you just want to push the center of the clip so it pops out good and now the bottom piece should piece and this is the bottom corner where we want to drill the two holes to
[23:41] put our zip tie in so get your drill and drill two holes at the bottom right through those two holes and pull it tight to create a loop just like that
[23:54] then cut the end off that zip tie to make it neat and check it out now we have our Loop now let's push the trim piece back together so it snaps in and then push the two clips in at the bottom okay so let's get the steering wheel on
[24:07] cable to the plastic trim and the idea here is if we ever have to remove this not have to remove the whole plastic trim [Music] piece all right so the cable's wrapping
[24:21] you can see it's not getting tangled with the wiper stock or the turn signal stock and if you listen closely there is a strange clicking noise and unfortunately I think I know what this is sometimes stuff like this happens but
[24:34] no big deal let's remove the steering wheel and then let's remove the quick release Hub and finally unbolt the hub adapter and let's get that Hub out so we remember that locking clip right here that prevents the clock spring from
[24:47] a feeling this could be an issue the stock wheel pushes down on this clip but the aftermarket hub adapter doesn't so let's pry this clip out and then let's pop the other one out too so it doesn't get loose down the road and now we can
[25:00] reinstall the hub adapter torque down the bolt reconnect the horn and with the snap my fingers all the bolts are tightened down okay so now let's give this another try all right and now that is much
[25:13] sounded like from the start no more clicking and the wire to the button is secured perfectly and the horn still works so now let's go and install our wheel hanger which will go right about here this is an aluminum wheel hanger
[25:27] cage like that and then these two bolts hand tighten in there and then we'll just snug it down to clamp The Hanger to the roll cage and now anytime we need to wheel on the hanger and you can see I'm all geared up again and look at how much
[25:41] quicker and easier it is to get out of the car this is so much safer without getting back in is also a lot quicker and easier when you don't have that let's test out the radio communication in the car our team in the pits will
[25:55] basically just like a walkie talkie a long range one and then inside our car walkie-talkie and we turn it on right here we're on channel one this goes to the antenna on the car and this goes to our comms button and also to our headset
[26:11] so we could speak and listen all right so let's get our steering wheel on and test this out so we're on the racetrack testing one two one two three perfect and we've successfully installed a quick release steering wheel so there
[26:27] you go that is how you properly install a quick release steering wheel including wiring the horn and that extra button and check it out it works perfect that is awesome I love it hopefully this video was helpful if it was remember to
[26:41] subscriber consider hitting that subscribe button for more Automotive how-to videos like this we have some good ones coming up including a battery cut off and how to install a fire suppression system and as always all the
[26:54] tools and products I used in this video will be linked down in the description will be linked down in the description destion so you could easily find them