Your steering wheel should have a couple of holes for a puller to work with. I never use a bearing splitter as it can damage the lower part of a steering wheel. I keep small pieces of scrap metal to use for the puller bushing to work on.

 

There is a tool for every job and that's the one you don't have.

 

Thats the way it always goes ..... Honestly the bearing splitter is actually the preferred tool and works fine. What pisses me off is I purchased the bearing splitter 2 years ago just for this job, this is the first time I have used it
I had to cut the bolt, I think I can take the cross bar to Ace hardware and find a new bolt for it .... I hope.

I have several other pullers, I might have the piece needed already .....



@ol' grouch There is no holes for a puller to connect to, you need to pull the wheel from the bottom.
Just me ruining my new tool because I used it improperly .... I was thinking I could put a washer under it to protect the shaft ..... I decided it would be fine as is.
We could start a thread called "Whats the dumbest thing you have seen today" .... My bonefead move would fit right in on it.


This wheel is probably junk but the metal frame is good and solid .... I will spend hours this winter with a dremel and cleaning the damaged areas and then the PC7 epoxy to fill the voids.
Grind and sand and recreate the shape and then paint ..... those boring days with the shop doors closed and the heat on .... I already bought a nice leather cover for it .... knowing it will not be perfect, but usable.

 

Grinding out the cracks and filling with body putty is how most old steering wheels are restored. The first time I pulled a steering wheel was when my '70 Dodge truck shifter collar broke and I had to replace it. I was still learning how to work on cars and my grandfather showed me how to remove it with a hammer.

Wrap your arm around the bottom of the wheel, remove the nut almost, but not quite all the way, and then whack the steering shaft with a BRASS sledge hammer while pulling up. The nut on the shaft kept from from going out the back window.

If you can get some really hard all thread rod, you can make a new shaft although finding the hard enough metal might be fun. Just double nut the end.

 

@ol' grouch Grinding out the cracks and filling with body putty is how most old steering wheels are restored. The first time I pulled a steering wheel was when my '70 Dodge truck shifter collar broke and I had to replace it. I was still learning how to work on cars and my grandfather showed me how to remove it with a hammer.

Wrap your arm around the bottom of the wheel, remove the nut almost, but not quite all the way, and then whack the steering shaft with a BRASS sledge hammer while pulling up. The nut on the shaft kept from from going out the back window.

If you can get some really hard all thread rod, you can make a new shaft although finding the hard enough metal might be fun. Just double nut the end.

All good advice.
The PC7 is a generic version of JB weld .... others may argue and be right .... I Dunno.
PC7 is cheaper and is used by many body shop professionals today for old steering wheels. I think a quart is like $23 on Amazon .... It is cheaper and maybe better then older putties .... Bondo is expensive today also.

Still not sure about the tool repair .... I'm hoping can just bring the piece to tractor supply or Ace hardware and figure out the thread size, then purchase the perfect grade 8 bolt for it.
Nothing is ever that easy though .... I really have not spent any time on it yet though.

The Caravan issue has been taking much of my time .... I just pushed it to the back burner and trying to get the fenders on the truck into paint.
Still have 2-4 weeks of good paint weather .... later the year the better because all the bugs disappear ....
Break is over, back to making a patch for a fender.

 

All I can say, this fender been kicking my butt for 2 days now .... No where near finished, but is roughed in and will need a lot of tap tap tap then weld weld weld ... grind grind grind.

Just as a self taught welder that has only welded in a few different simple patches before, dealing with the multiple curves was a challenge.
I made one patch panel that I ended up installing in 3 pieces, then I needed 3 different pie cuts to the metal to get it to conform to shape. .... It was interesting.


Basic shape is there, just going to take a lot of patience with a hammer/dolly, welder, grinder to finish it.

Now I'm ready to move on to this one, try to get it roughed in and to the same level of repair ... then I will strip them both down to bare metal and final body work before paint.


I did a little work on this one already, my goal was to secure it enough that it would not fold in 1/2 while moving it around. A couple years ago.



Will be interesting to see this one in a few days and see what I settle for as "good enough" This fender was really beat up and will be very difficult for me to get the proper curve back into the original metal.

Same time a friend reached out to me the other day on a different forum, said he had a couple extra fenders he would sell me. ... needed a little work but not bad.
A smart man would take him up on the offer .... I was never accused of being smart .....
Right now after looking at these fenders for 5 years, I'm taking it as a personal challenge to see if I can bring them back to some sort of life.

This was a old construction truck, there is much body damage on it from being hit by heavy equipment ... the dent in the cab corner I believe was done by a fork on a fork lift.
Both fenders ripped and smashed while loading & unloading, the drivers side bed rail is tweaked so bad at a awkward place ... a fork lift again.
The running boards on these trucks are very stout .... mine are all wavy from machinery .... I will never make this truck perfect, just good enough.

 

Well I have to say the driver side went better then the passenger side ..... I feel I did the passenger side wrong and created more work for myself.
Hey it is metal and all comes out the same in the end.
This is how I did the driver side, no fuss or stress .... just multiple easy patches to make one big one.



Still a lot of work to do with them, but they are both at least solid, rust repaired and will get painted someday soon when I finish all the hammer and dolly work and final welding.

Just nice to see them back on the truck, and know that I can finish them to "good enough" for a beater with a heater.

 

Been too busy with other projects to play with the truck lately. ..... We call this life getting in the way.

Had some time to play with it a bit .... too cold to want to go outside and work, so been playing in the shop. Working on converting over to electronic ignition.
I am not smart enough to figure this out on my own, others have done this many times and just following what they did .... looking ok so far.


Seems the worse part is removing .030 from the housing so the 1979 slant 6 distributor will fit into the 1949 engine block ... I used a 7/16" bolt through the distributor and 7/16" bushing and chucked it up in a drill.
Used 110 grit emmory cloth and ground it down to the same as the original dizzy. .... everything seems to be fitting good on the 1949 shaft.
The vacuum advance was not working, so I ordered that along with a new cap and rotor. .... Not putting it together without a good vacuum advance.

I thought about ordering a new pickup and reluctor also. .... The used parts I have look pretty good and possible to be OEM and better then new parts ordered .... so I decided to wait.
They are easy enough to change later if needed.

Just glad to get this over with, I'm ready to start building the wiring harness ... I planned to run points then later down the road switch to electronic ... modify the wiring harness to work at that time .... better to just get it done now.
And the insulation of the wiring passing through the original distributor failed and ground out the points .... I could have fixed that .... time to just get er did and move on.

 

Finally got a chance to work on it some more .... Not because I got the Dodge Caravan fixed, because am tired and frustrated with the Caravan and not going to touch it til next year

Got the distributor back together and it went pretty well ... Honestly I need to take it apart and remove a brass shim to get proper end play but all is well.


I was surprised at the next step ... I need to order the ICM and a electrical pig tail to connect it .... Almost had a heart attack when I saw they want $130 for the pig tail.
So I did a little more research, found out all the Kool Chrysler kids are running the GM HEI ICM on their mopars. So I have decided I would go this direction and get rid of the mopar ignition to control the distributor .... pretty simple setup and a AC DELCO ICM is made in USA and dependable.
If I use the GM coil, they have a nice mounting bracket with a heat sync for the ICM, makes for a clean installation.

 

Gm on a mopar?
I'm proud to say I'm not a cool kid because I run MSD6A! You can use the existing wiring to the pick up, Two connections to the battery(positive, negative) coil and a ignition on wires and that's it. You have to use constant 12V coil with it, I opted for a Accel super coil.