Technical Steering wheel adapter

I am looking to swap out my steering wheel on my 52 Ford Crestline. I have searched and searched but cannot find an adapter for the life of me (other than a Grant universal, which i am leery on how it would even work much less look). I have found them for early ford up to 1948 but nothing for my 52. It seems like it would be a pretty basic adapter. Has anyone with a 52 or similar ben able to find anything?

 

I am sure experienced replies will be forth coming soon.

 

What kind of wheel do you want to put on it?

 

I haven't really decided. Everytime i find a company with a wheel i like, they don't have the adapter i need. So i would like to find the adapter to determine what steering wheels i can go with

 

As far as I know Grant is the only one that makes an adapter for your car. http://www.grantproducts.com/
Part #4267

Post up the wheels you're looking at and maybe we can come up with a solution.

 

Same here. Wondered about changing steering wheels. "Are there adapters?" Went looking and didn't find a lot.

I've given this some thought in the past.

It seems this is a small void in the hot rodding world that nearly nobody has stepped up to fill.

And I wondered why.

I know that making male/female splines is a specialized process. And making splines on a small piece and in blind holes is difficult. So it might not be so easy to make an adapter from one piece of stock.

But splined shafts and couplings are available. Seems it wouldn't be too difficult to cut a short length of stock...female for the column...male for the steering wheel...and weld them together.

But wait. How do you attach everything? The column has the male threaded portion at the very end. And that threaded portion isn't long enough to protrude all the way through my little adapter to get the nut on it.

So as almost all my initially seemingly genius ideas go, it's not so simple.

The only solution I came up with was to possibly modify the column. Cut the threaded portion off the column and drill and tap into the shaft. Use a long bolt instead of a nut to hold everything together.

 

The problem is the liability since it is the steering. I wanted to have the “square” Chrysler wheel in my car and since the original tilt-telescopic was messed up and the turn signals were broken also I put in a Flaming River column. I still had to adapt the Chevy spline from the FR column to the Chrysler hub. When you grind away the original plastic from your new old wheel you will have to drill out the old spline using a hole saw and lots of lube. You will have to replace the drill bit with something that will pilot in the original spline.

Since you will be keeping your original 53 column, this will be how you obtain a spline to adapt the new steering wheel to your Ford column. Using the hole saw method, drill out the hub on the new wheel you want to use, then you will need to weld the ford spline in the new wheel. Repairing the plastic, priming and painting comes next. It is a pretty big project but worth the effort.