Okay, so maybe it’s not from there..but it came from somewhere nice. My original steering wheel was a bit under the weather as you may have seen when I first took possession of the car. Here’s what it looked like:
Notice how it’s all faded and parts of it had torn away. There was also a hairline crack in the upper wood portion..it wasn’t easily visible..but I could feel it when driving. I had searched high and low for a deal on a used or new wheel and always came up short..or found ones way out of the price range I wanted to spend.
Somehow I got lucky while doing my random searches through eBay. I found a wheel from an 03′ (X308) XJ for only $49.99 No, that’s not a typo. Amazingly no one bid on it. Which basically never happens. What luck!!
I also got lucky with the color code. The seller didn’t know the color code..so the seller described it and it seemed to be correct. At that price I couldn’t go wrong anyhow. Okay..on to the swap process.
First things first…SAFETY! Remember we are replacing the steering wheel which means we must remove the SRS Airbag from the original wheel and attach it to the “new” one. So step one is simple. Remove the positive terminal from the battery which s located in the trunk on the right side under an access panel (labeled to lessen confusion, and leave the trunk open..DO NOT CLOSE IT, it locks electronically..get it?):
Here it is with the terminal removed. Make sure it is no where near being able to touch or come into contact:
You must wait at least 1 minute before touching any of the airbag components. This allows for the dissipation of the reserve charge that stays in the system to allow deployment of the bag in the case that power is lost during an accident. So again WAIT ONE MINUTE BEFORE CONTINUING!!!
Okay…next step: Removing the steering wheel airbag assembly. On the backside of the wheel is two holes containing torx30 bolts (removed wheel image to easily show the locations):
Here is what the bit looks like so you know what I’m referring to:
The easy way to do this is insert the key in the ignition and hold down the brake to release the steering lock mechanism. Turn the wheel 90 degrees either way from centerline and you’ll have access to that respective torx30 bolt from the top above the steering column. Repeat this fro the other bolt. Now gently remove the airbag and be sure to get the wire unhooked from the holding clip:
Then unplug the airbag harness from the steering wheel airbag assembly:
Now remove the horn buttons harness from the original wheel, it will be used on the X308 wheel since they have different harnesses:
Now that the wiring is removed, we can move on to removing the actual steering wheel from the hub. To remove the main bolt you’ll need a 17mm socket:
Before you get overzealous and remove that wheel completely…here’s something very important to do FIRST. In order to align the new wheel with the correct position of the hub’s centerline…score a mark on the hub showing the centerline position:
Then score a mark on the new wheel at centerline..then just line them up!
Attach the original horn buttons harness to the new wheel and replace the 17mm bolt down tight:
Here is where the two wheels differ, the X308 has Audio and Cruise control buttons mounted on the steering wheel. This leaves to open gaps on the sides where they would normally reside. The X300 airbag assembly will not fit over these buttons and the rear section of the X300 wheel is PART of the steering wheel while the X308 is a separate piece. So basically here is what it looks like:
Here it is bolted down with open holes and X300 horn harness in place:
Take the X308 buttons and remove the black metal mounting plates from them. They are attached by 4 small Phillips head screws. Then take these plates and re-attach them to the new wheel to create “blockoff” plates. Here they are attached to the wheel:
Here is what it will then look like from the side..no more gaping hole ( I may make a color matched cover for these later on):
Now just repeat the other steps in reverse order to put the airbag assembly back on the new wheel and it should look like this:
Another shot to get the big picture and compare it to the past (the color of the wood on the new wheel matches my new shift knob very well):
So there you have it X308 wheel adapted to X300!! (a 7 year newer wheel update!)
