Hey guys chris fix here and today, i'm 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 detail. That way, when you're done watching this video you'll be able to install your very own quick release, 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 show you: if you're going to be racing, if you're going to be drifting, there's a good chance you're going to need a roll cage, you can see.

We have a roll cage right here, so you can't slide in and out of the car like you used to with the car without a roll cage, so that makes 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 bucket seat, it doesn't move it's bolted to the chassis and that makes it really difficult to get in and out because i mean look at this. Look at the space that you have here: that is it, so you need to be able to squeeze in and out of that spot and that could get very dangerous if you need to get out of the car quickly. Why not? Let me show you all right! So, let's get in the car and notice, i have all my racing gear on and this adds to the difficulty i have to readjust my legs and my body.

That way, i could slip one leg in at a time, then make sure you don't smack your head against that roll cage good now getting 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 gets in the way and trips me up, and i think that demonstration pretty much speaks for itself. There's just not a lot of room here to get in and out with a 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. Some of you might not want to hear, 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 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. Instead, what you could do to have a custom steering wheel is send your stock steering wheel out and they could do stuff. Like add carbon fiber. Look at this blue carbon fiber in here this looks absolutely gorgeous.

This is the del sol steering wheel, they added my logo at the bottom and it maintains the stock air bag. 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 red stitch and the carbon fiber and again we maintain the stock airbag, that's very important, so that gives you the option of having something unique, something custom, something different. If your steering wheel is too big, they can actually cut the bottom and make it flat like that. So that's a really good option for the cars that are going to be used on the street. 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 six-point harness, we have our helmet, our neck restraint device, a racing seat.

All this stuff works together. So you don't need 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 safe thing to do, and i just wanted to mention that real quick, because safety is very important. I want to give you guys the best information, so you can make your own decisions now with that said, here are all the tools and products you need to get this job done and install your very own quick release, 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 locker, so our steering wheel doesn't come loose after we install if you're going to be installing a horn which i'll show you how to do. I have a very cool trick on using these breadboard connectors to connect directly to your stock clock spring makes it really easy 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, 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 steering wheels, so i can show you the differences between different steering wheels.

So you can 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 doing it, but they haven't done it at the 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 suppression system they're a well-known racing brand, and this is a high-end steering wheel. Don't cheap out on your steering wheel, don't get a no-name brand, and here is why. So. This is my friend that dude in blue and he just unbolted his old quick release, steering 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! Now that was just pulling on it. Imagine the forces in an accident which could be much higher. This steering wheel definitely shouldn't break that easily, and this makes it incredibly dangerous. So it's very important to get a high quality steering wheel and the last thing i'm going to show you is how to install a push button like this, on your steering wheel, for a line lock for nitrous for two step or in our case we're gon na Use it for radio communications, the driver will be able to press this 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 when it's not being used so i'll, be sure 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. Now before you go and remove the stock 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 when we install the new steering wheel, it goes on straight and not crooked, and once this is straight, you can take the 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 removing that steering wheel bolt a lot 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 battery, and this is very important because we're going to be removing the airbag and anytime you touch the airbag. You always want to disconnect the battery and, more specifically, you want to disconnect the negative cable on the battery, and this is a 10 millimeter nut so loosen it up and then pull the cable off and move it off to the side. So it can't touch the battery post by accident, and now our battery is completely disconnected now 15 to 20 minutes later. Those airbag capacitors should be completely discharged and we could safely remove our airbag so to do that on most vehicles on the side of the steering wheel, there's going to be two holes, you can see right there.

We have one hole and the other holes directly 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 grab a flathead, screwdriver and slide it into the hole on the side of the steering wheel. And then you want to push 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 spring and pull the airbag out like that.

Now, with the airbag loose, there are two wires attached to the airbag that need 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 out of the airbag now do the same thing for the other connector pop the plastic retaining clip up, and then We can remove the whole clip from the back of the airbag and now our airbag is free and could be removed, and just so you have one more angle with the airbag removed. You can see right. There is the spring and then right up in this corner.

That is where our screwdriver is gon na fit in, and then we're just gon na push the spring just like that, and you can see the spring is moving over and that clicks the air bag out. When you move the spring all the way over like that, so that's all there is to removing an 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 be removed, and you can see where 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, when we get it in here to pry it out, you won't damage the plastic.

So now with that removed, we have access to the bolt. We need to unscrew right there. So, let's break this bolt loose good and many times these bolts won't come out all the way you can actually see it's held in by a plastic keeper to prevent the bolt from falling out good. So with the bolt unscrewed all the way.

Now we can go onto the other side of the steering wheel and 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 the connectors, and then both connectors will come right out and then on this specific airbag. We need to remove a 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 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 worry about it.

The airbags not going off, it's disconnected you'll, be fine, so that gives you a good idea of how 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 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 millimeter and there's also a couple electrical connectors connected that we need to remove that way.

We can take the 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 here is where the airbag sits and you would press on the airbag to press on 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 the horn could be - and you can see right over here - is an electrical connector and that connects to this metal plate and then Right here is 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 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 plastic holder and then we need to 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're just looking at. So if we take a closer 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 could do is we could disconnect this yellow connector might as well get this one out of the way as well and we'll just get our breadboard jumpers connected to each One of those pins it doesn't matter which color goes to which pin we just need to make a connection 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 wires. We need to connect to our horn on the quick release and that's all there is to figuring out how to make your horn work, nice and simple and i'll show you how to wire this up. When we get the quick release in for now, we could remove these and let's remove this 16 millimeter bolt. So we can remove our steering wheel so 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 it a little wiggle and pull outwards, and that's all there is to removing a steering wheel. It is that simple one 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. 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 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 wheel, puller i'll, put a link in the description to where you could easily get this it's inexpensive or you could rent this for free at many parts stores and for some cars you need to have a steering wheel puller, because the steering wheel Is pressed onto the hub here so real quick, let me show you how this works on the drift stand, first, screw in the bolt that holds the steering wheel in just a few threads, so the puller has something to push against next find the right size bolts From the kit that fit in the holes in the steering wheel - and you can see these bolt holes built into the steering wheel which are designed to work with that puller now, your puller comes with a bunch of different attachments. In this case, i'm going to be using this attachment, which will fit nicely over our bolt. Then we can grab our two bolts and tighten them down by hand, so we don't cross thread them now. We can start tightening this down, which should pull the steering wheel right off and with that pop the steering wheel is now loose and we could remove the puller.

Also don't forget about that. Torx bolt and that's all there is to removing a steering wheel. That's press fit on okay, so with the steering wheel removed, we are almost done. All that's left is getting our new steering wheel on and 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 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 good and then let's get the other breadboard connector on the pin right next to that and again make sure it clicks in and while this isn't completely necessary, i, Like to make sure these connectors don't come out, so i'm using a little bit of liquid electrical tape, which you could 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 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 adapter. So, as we put the hub on it's 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 steering wheel will be straight up and then once it's aligned push it onto the splines good. So with our hub completely seated, and it's straight now.

What we could do is grab our bolt and get some medium strength thread locker on the threads, 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 torque. It to your car's spec, which in this case is 46 foot-pounds for this bmw good. So with that torqued 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 connect to these two wires. So, on the 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, 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 always want to test the crimp by pulling 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 crimp is tight good.

So, with our connectors crimped on now, we can connect our quick release hub. So let's connect these wires. Just like that, and just like that beautiful you want to make sure that these wires don't have any exposed metal because you don't want to ground out 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 in and set up our quick release hub, like that now you can see the top of the quick release hub. Has that little dot 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 first screw at the top to hold it in place. Now, just to let you know, these screws did not come with the quick release hub, so you're going to have to pick up your own screws. These are m5 and i ended up getting the m5-16, so they're 16 millimeters long and they're the perfect length i'll leave a link to these in the description.

So now we just want to hand 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 tightening these you don't need to make them super tight. But you definitely want to snug them up the thread. Locker will make sure they don't come out, so 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 to line up with that dot, and that's how 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, we can install our steering wheel, which will bolt right up to that hub. Now 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 into place, and all these screws have 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 up. In a crisscross pattern to evenly seat the steering wheel against the 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 here, but we have a male end here. So we need to cut this and crimp on another female connector. So let's cut off our 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. Now, let's give it the old pull test, and this is good.

So, let's get both of our connectors onto the back of the horn and be sure to push both of these connectors on nice and tight like so and then. Finally, we can push the horn into place on the steering wheel, okay, so with the battery connected. Let's try this out, the horn works perfect and it disconnects look at that. That is beautiful, okay, so that is done, and i still want to show you how to install 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 could show you how to pick out the correct steering wheel for your application. So let me show you real quick. Now there are five main things you should look for when picking out a steering wheel, i'm gon na quickly cover them, starting with materials.

Now for most track cars, you're gon na want a steering wheel. That has good grip and suede gives you that grip. But there are situations like with drifting where you might want the wheel to slip through your hands and leather gives you some grip, and it also gives you some slip and actually prefer leather for drifting. But for our wheel to wheel racing we're gon na be using suede next, we have shape and steering wheels come in all different shapes, but there are two common ones: the round one and the cut off bottom for most applications, you're, probably going to want the round.

One especially if you're, making more than 180 degree turns with the steering wheel, but if your car is really tight and there's not a lot of leg room, you might need a cut off bottom to give you more leg room, that's not a 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 millimeters in diameter, and our aftermarket wheel is 350 millimeters in diameter. So definitely a lot smaller.

Now, a smaller steering wheel is more sensitive. So for every degree you turn the steering wheel, 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.

So if you don't have power, steering you have to be careful in this case we do have power steering so it's not a big deal. We rather have quicker steering, so a smaller wheel works better now for a bigger wheel. If you don't have power, steering it makes it easier to steer with a bigger wheel, because it gives you more leverage also for every degree that you turn the steering wheel. You turn it less than with a smaller steering wheel.

So if you're doing high speed 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 have the dish now. Dish is the distance from the mounting surface to the steering surface, and you can see this is 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 we're in a fixed bucket racing seat bolted to the chassis, it doesn't slide like a normal seat.

The only way to change the distance between the steering wheel and me is to change out the steering wheel with a different dish. So, what's the proper distance between me and the steering wheel, all you need to do is force yourself into the back of the seat 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 grab nine and three, and you want to check your bend in your elbow.

You want a little bit of a bend like that. You don't want to be all the way out and you don't want to be all the way tucked in so this is perfect for me now what about our deep dish wheel? If we install the deep dish wheel check this out, you can see my wrist is out here and the wheels all the way over here. That's too close, this isn't good. Also, when i'm nine and 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 steering wheel, and this is pretty important, because 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, which matches the bolt pattern. Now these are the three most common bolt patterns and the brands they go with so depending 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 all right. So now you know how to pick 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 communications and then, let's get in and out of the car i'll show you the difference, because the difference is 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 it in place so get those over the wire and slide them down to the button. And now we can thread the first nut all the 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 first nut in place as you tighten the second nut to jam them together, good and that's not going anywhere next, you 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 yanked on alright. 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 shifter right here, but now we realize this isn't the best spot, because in order to use the radio, we had to take our hand off the steering wheel and that isn't a good thing when you're racing.

So the wire to the old button runs up behind the dash to this connector right 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 wrap around the steering wheel, could also wrap around the wiper stock and that wouldn't be good, so to fix that problem. What we're going to do is mount 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 needs to be popped out and then this 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 come right out. So this is our plastic piece, and this is the bottom corner, where we want to drill the two holes to put our zip tie in so get your drill and drill two holes at the bottom right here and then we can feed a zip tie through those Two holes and pull it tight to create a loop just like that 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 and now we could zip tie the end of the cable to the plastic trim, and the idea here is: if we ever have to remove this, we could just cut the small zip tie and not have to remove the whole Plastic trim piece all right, so the cable's wrapping perfectly around the steering wheel and 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 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 can see what the noise is.

So you remember that locking clip right here that prevents the clock spring from spinning when the wheel's off well, i had 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 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 better. That's what it should sound 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 and it simply clamps around the roll 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 get out of the car. You just put the wheel on the hanger, and you can see i'm all geared up again and look at how much quicker and easier it is to get out of the car.

This is so much safer without the stock steering wheel in the way, and getting back in is also a lot quicker and easier when you don't have that steering wheel there, all right. So now, let's test out the radio communication in the car, our team in the pits we'll have a headset connected to this. It's basically just like a walkie-talkie, a long-range one and then inside our car. We have our 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. 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 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 give it a thumbs up if you're not a 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 tools and products i used in this video will be linked down in the description, so you could easily find them.