Maccers

Hello - has anyone replaced their steering wheel? I have an MY00 (classic) with Air Bag.

I have the old wheel off, (disconnected the battery etc) and now have a Sparco dished wheel, with boss to fit.

The boss wont fit with the plastic circular thing thats screwed to where the indicatiors are. I need to unplug some wires down underneath dash - not a problem, dont even mind that the air bag light will come on.

I will need a horn though, how in earth do you wire it in? As I will need to remove the plastic bit that hosts the wiring connectors for the airbag and horn.

Any help appreciated.

Maccers

Answering my own question - as I have now done all the work, but wanted to share with other people in case they do a search, hopefully they will find this.

I did need to remove the plastic circular thing that sits behind the wheel, this transfers airbag and horn signals to the loom. This also hosts the two prongs to cancel the indicators. It gets in the way of the new boss so needs to be removed.

The plugs are a bit of a pain, especially the airbag one (yellow). Once unplugged from the foot well area ( i removed the seat to get a good working area, lying on my back) trace them back and get them from under the steering column, will need to wiggle them a bit to get them past the top of the column where the indicators are and the spleened shaft for the wheel.
Unless you dont want to keep the bits for later use, you can cut/rip them out as you please!

The steering wheel I used was a Sparco, and did not have an airbag, my old Momo branded original wheel did. I used an OMP boss, which at first I thought would not fit all the way over the splines, but once its torqued to 44NM, it pulls over nicely.

The horn - I did not bother with the push button thing in the centre, although the OMP boss did have a brass ring on it, I could not be bothered rigging something up. I did read someone on here who put a screw on the column, that touched the brass ring to maintain an earth. You still need to get power up to the push button on the wheel tho.

Instead, I located the red/green wire from the one of the plugs I undone to get the plastic ring out. The plug has one wire going to it, red / green, then when it comes out the other side and connects to the bit i removed, it has 3 wires, but when I looked at the top end, ie the steering wheel end, the pins were removed, so I have no idea, maybe a function that my car did not have, volume on the steering wheel or something. Used a tester to check for continuity once I had removed the wires and plugs, and the two other wires do nothing, the red/green has continuity all the way to the last bit which connects to the back of the wheel (old one).

So, once I confirmed with my Impreza "Haynes" manual I got off ebay, red / green is the power lead. I cut the plug off, connected a wire, ran it to the centre console where the hand brake is, and removed one of the blanks, I have three on my car, again no idea what they are for, looks like where you would find buttons for the windows.

Removed the blank, bought a red push button switch for £6 from auto shop, it fitted perfectly in the carrier luckily and then ran a ground to the body under the driver seat.

While the steering plastic was stripped down, I checked to see if the Airbag light would stay on, and it did, so I took the clocks out and removed the bulb.

Horn works great, and the steering wheel is fantastic. I got mine with a 90mm dish, so it sits closer to me which is nice.

Hope that helps anyone doing the same as me!