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 disassembly 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.