steering wheel conversion

I have a 53 Chevy 210 with a stock column and wheel which have grooves inside. I found a 51 Merc wheel that I would like to put on it, but it uses a woodruff key. Is there any way to easily convert it so I could use it on my stock column?

 

You can put darn near any GM wheel on there except Buick, Olds, Caddy from certain years and models. A Ford product is another story. Maybe cut the center out of a 1980s era GM steering wheel and tack or bolt it to the bottom of the Merc wheel center. Or use it to pin on the Merc wheel from the top.

 

I have the opposite, a 55 Chevy wheel and a 40 Ford column. Take the column shaft out of the column tube, cut it and graft a section of the Merc/Ford shaft to it. It's very easy to do.

 

I would pull the shaft out of the column tube and take it to a machine shop and the shaft machined to match the wheel hub.

 

Not quite the same combination of parts, but....my F1 steering box/column used a splined wheel hub. I wanted to use an early Ford wheel, tapered/keyway. I used the upper 7 or so inches of an early Ford shaft and spliced it onto the original. The joint was a proper splice utilizing aircraft standards. You may find an easier way to do the mod you want, but dis***embly of the steering column may be the best way.

 

How hard is it to take just the shaft out without taking out the entire column? In the past I have always found wheels that fit and just swaped them out.

The wheels appear to have the same inside diameter. I think machining a slot would be the best way. I thought about trying to tig weld a center from another GM wheel, but I didn't want to mess up the only Merc wheel I had, it is in pretty decent shape.

 

That's just it, you can't do that on a 54 and back Chevy, the column and box is a one piece unit, and is not intended to be taken apart.

 

Although the Chevy shaft is splined, it has the same taper as early Ford. Just have a keyway cut into it to match up with the one on the Merc wheel. I'm running a stock steering wheel on my '38 Ford pickup mated up to a tilt column out of a '77 Monte Carlo.