Technical Adapting vintage steering wheels to modern columns

I like to use vintage factory steering wheels on my street rod builds. Modern wheels just don't look right to me. Also like late model tilt GM steering columns. Here are a couple conversions I have done.

I might have posted this one here before but it was a long time ago. I used a junk yard GM tilt column in my '53 Chevy pickup. The original Chevy wheel has the exact same splines as the newer column. To adapt it I just had to cut off the cone off the back of the wheel, epoxy on a sheet metal plate the diameter of the fatter tilt column, then use Bondo to mold the two shapes together.


The second conversion was to adapt a 1940 Plymouth wheel to a Summit tolt column which is identical to the GM. The wheel has a splined hole the same diameter as the GM column but the spline pitch is different (finer splines) so thewy wouldn't mate. I contacted a couple companies who cut splines but thewy didn't want to fool with my tiny job. I decided to try cutting my own splines.

First step was to cut off the back of the wheel like I did on the Chevy. Then I had to acquire a GM tilt column stub shaft with the desired GM splines. These are commonly available on ebaY for typically $25 or so. I cut off the splined part of the stub shaft and mounted it in my lathe. I turned the part of the shaft below the spline for a loose slip fit inside the Plymouth hole. Then I under cut the splines in 3 spots to form cutting teeth. On the bottom ring I machined the splines to about a third of spline height. The next ring up I machined the splines to 2/3 height. The top ring was left untouched. Then I hardened the tool by heating it red hot and quenching it in water. This worked, a mill file couldn't make a mark in the hardened steel.

Tool ready and painted with thread cutting fluid, I set it up inserted into the wheel hole on my 20 ton press. I pressed it through the hole a couple times, clocked in different rotations to eliminate the missing spline spots GM put into the stub shaft. The result was a perfectly fitting wheel on the column.

 

I like this! A neat idea