Steering Wheel Removal

[Rich Waugh]

The coefficient of thermal expansion of steel is fairly low so it takes a LOT of heat to make meaningful change - the hair dryer won't do it, I'm afraid.

Where heat really works well on frozen rusted parts is when you can heat things up to a low red heat using a reducing flame from an oxy/fuel torch. At that heat and with the extra carbon from a reducing flame, the rust, Fe2O3 is converted back to Fe+CO2, if I remember my chemistry correctly. Now those huge rust molecules are shrunk back down to their original size and things free up. :thumbsup:

The other advantage to using the O/A torch is that if things don't free right up you can just go ahead and hit the lever for the cutting jet and away it goes!:laughing:

 

[fiddlerkelly]

I got the B2630 model and my steering wheel is sloppy in the column . Just below the wheel in the column it looks like a Possible teflon bushing. I was going to remove the wheel so I can get a better look at the bushing but first I have to remove the plastic cap in the center of the wheel before actually removing the wheel . This is where I run into the problem ,how do I get the plastic cap off. I tried prying it both with no excuse.

Any suggestions.

 

[fiddlerkelly]

Got the cap off. I went out to town council depot to speak to a mechanic out there as they have some Kubota's and one of them use to work at Kubota he told me to drench under the cap with lube so I used W1040 and a little while after tried pulling it off and it worked.

 

[tigers2007]

I never did get my steering wheel off. It was too the point that I thought the puller was going to come off like a grenade -- I had a linemans helmet and faceshield on lol. Considered putting on a catchers vest. It ended up breaking one bolt and twisting the crap out of the other. I gave up and used a sawzall to cut the fiberglass body to pull the front part off. 10 seconds of that vs. the 2hrs I spent bickering with that steering wheel.

 

[Bob Rooks]

Once you get the puller under a good amount of tension, usually just a sharp blow with a steel hammer to the top of the threaded puller shaft will do the trick. Be sure you leave the steering shaft nut on several threads.