my question is, how tough and how long am i looking at to removing the old cracked discolored excuse for a steering wheel in my car, and replacing it with a newer one.

i bought a new wheel, and im gonna take it to an upholstery shop and get the outter part of the wheel dyed FPR to give my interior a little more personal touch to it. and its suprisingly cheap.

but before i let acura put it on for 110 bucks for 1.2 hours of labor, i was wondering if this was a DIY job or not.

thanks.

 

It is not hard, provided you have a basic crows-foot steering wheel puller or similar device.
There is a DIY based on an Acura Service Bulletin (#03-015) on here somewhere that covers removing & replacing the steering wheel. Our Mod on here, fsttyms1, has posted this before, so he knows where it is.

The actual problem the SB is for is Remote Audio Controls, Horn & Cruise Control Buttons Not Working Right ( all the steering wheel mounted controls) due a bad ground in the clockspring section of the steering shaft. You do have to disconnect & remove the air bag, so be sure to follow instructions and disconnect the battery and wait 5 or 10 minutes before preceeding. There are also 2 Torx bolts/screws on the side of the wheel that Acura says to discard & replace with NEW ones whenever they are removed.

 

i'll have to look for that DIY..

i trust my acura.. i just didnt think it was worth 100+ bucks to swap on a new steering wheel

 

i replaced my wheel a few times on my civics.

should be little plastic pieces on either side of the wheel that come off.

under there area few torx screws that hold the air bag in. remove those and then i THINK its a 17mm bolt that has to be removed.

one thing to keep in mind...make sure you mark the teeth before removing the wheel or it wont be perfectly vertical and drive you crazy to the point where you pull over and have to fix it. i believe torque is 56lb/ft for that nut.

steering wheel puller is not necessary...just wiggle it off

 

 

Make sure you disconnect the battery BEFORE you do any thing. That said it is simple.

http://www.in.honda.com/Rjanisis/pubs/SB/B03-015.PDF

 

serious? i dont believe i've seen one post in the last week that wasnt just this.... lay off the emoticons, nobody cares about your post count

there's no pictures to be had here... it was a question for future reference

and duely noted fttyms

 

The link provided will aid you in removing it. Its for something else but it will help you getting it off

 

appreciated. end inquiry

 

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The link for the .PDF doesn't work for me either. Can anyone post it or a provide a working link. Thanks.

 

It's simple as can be. I just did mine 2 weeks back. Disconnect battery and wait!! Please wait or eat airbag your pick. After that there's 2 panels on the sides of the wheel left and right when you're in the center and one on the bottom. First pop the bottom panel and there's a small wire harness. Press the tab and release this then take it off the white clip so it's loose. Next pop those side panels off and there's a T30 screw under each to remove. This will free your airbag. Gently bring it forward (it's still connected) and release the second wire. Set this aside gently and continue on. Remove the wiring harness for cruise and radio controls (radio has 2 cruise has 1) Next comes the counterbalance or whatever that black bar on top is. Remove that and you can keep for new wheel or not, your call. This will give u access to the white plastic wire holder. Remove this as well and save it. Now you do NOT need a puller of any sorts to do this. I just took my keys out and locked the wheel to keep it from spinning or moving on me once I had the wheel off. Wiggle and pull towards you firmly but with CONTROL you don't want it to break loose and crack your nose. Just remove the casing and transfer it over. That's it just install it the same way you removed the old one. I snapped a pic of the wires before I touched any just for reference purposes. If you bought an MdX woodgrain wheel use the old airbag screws to mount that black weight if you choose to reuse it and use NEW supplied screws to attach airbag.

 

Here's the few pics I have left of the job.
Airbag is out:

New wheel on:

03 MDX wheel 116 shipped off eBay:

Good luck. It's not hard at all. I'm totally new to wrenching on foreign cars cause all I ever had was domestic and I had no issues w this one. Total of 6 screws and 5 wire harnesses and you're golden.

 

how did you get the TORX screws out without stripping them? i think mine are held in with some sort of thread locker. they were starting to strip last time i tried to get the wheel off a couple years ago so i backed off. but now i need to get my wheel off to replace it with the RSX wheel i got.

 

T30 torx. It broke loose easily w ratchet and 6" extension. Get a 3/8 T30 torx ratchet bit.