Well sure, I’ll take some Momo!

The first step in mak­ing a track car? Well it’s to put a race steer­ing wheel in it of course! Don’t let those pan­sies that say you’re sup­posed to do sus­pen­sion or tires first, they just don’t know.

Now, you can’t just slap any wheel on your car, it’s gotta be L-​E-​G-​I-​T. That’s why I went with this crusty Momo steer­ing wheel that has been in my friend’s base­ment for 4 years. Yes, its tried and true (read: busted, used, abused).

The install itself was pretty straight for­ward, except when it isn’t. Before you get started there are a few things that you need to get:

• An after­mar­ket steer­ing wheel
• After­mar­ket steer­ing wheel adapter (I choose NRG)
• Steer­ing wheel quick release (Optional — I also choose NRG)
• A 3.3 ohm resis­tor or 3 10 ohm resistors
• Sol­der
• Sol­der­ing Iron
• Basic tools (Screw dri­vers, 10mm socket wrench, patience)

First you have to take off the airbag. There are 4, 10mm nuts that hold the airbag. After that, just pull it out and take the clips off the back (NOTE: Airbags are dan­ger­ous and I’m not respon­si­ble for your idiocy, be care­ful). After the airbag is out, there is sim­ply 1, 17mm nut that holds the steer­ing wheel in place. Remove that, then wig­gle the wheel to pull it off of the steer­ing rack.

Now comes the fun part, you will have to remove all of the pan­els behind the steer­ing wheel. There are 4 philips screws under the steer­ing col­umn. After remov­ing those, you can sim­ply take the top and bot­tom halves off.

There is a metal plate under the steer­ing rack, it is only held in place by two philips screws in the every end.

With that remove you will now see where the wires for the horn and airbag run to. Unclip them from the main har­ness and remove any zip ties to remove the wires them­selves. You should now be able to pull the clock spring out of the cen­ter (NOTE: make sure that the clock spring is not moved, there is only so much turn­ing that it can do before it breaks. Make sure that it is 2.5 turns from each side). We will have to mas­sage this piece later. You may also have to remove the piece behind that, it houses the elec­tri­cal com­po­nents for the wipers and the indicators.

Now that you have the clock spring removed, you may notice that there is no way you can fit it in to the short hub adapter. There are a few things you must do. On the back of the short hub adapter, remove the plas­tic back­ing plate. Now, on the clock spring, remove the plas­tic sur­round on the wires.

Pic­ture from Edmunds install

Now, you will also have to snip off the clip at the end of the wire. This is way too big to fit into the short hub and is also not needed.

Now, if you have a 3.3 ohm resis­tor, you can sol­der it onto the white and red wires. This will trick the airbag ECU into think it’s still there. I would sug­gest sol­der it it after you’ve stuck it through the hole in the short hub. You will also have to trim the base of the wires to fit into the short hub (I used a dremel for this).

If you only have the 10 ohm resis­tors then you will have to sol­der them between the wires in par­al­lel. If you’re not sure what this means, please read up here. I would also sug­gest shrink wrap­ping the wires so you don’t short anything.

Now start putting stuff back together. The clock spring and wires should go back through the same space as the wiper con­trols. Make sure to cen­ter the clock spring as well as the short hub adapter. Now bolt on the quick release if you haven’t done so. Finally bolt on the wheel to the quick release, then snap the horn but­ton on (make sure to con­nect the horn but­ton first).

You should be all done now!

Look at you, you didn’t even need any pic­tures! Con­grats, now drive it around to see if you broke any­thing. If you’re lucky like me your wheel will be cocked to one side!

Tags: miata, momo, mx-5, nrg, race, track