Cutting down a steering wheel.

Is there anybody who knows of a vendor who can resize the hoop on a steering wheel.

The TBird has a factory 18 inch wheel and I have trouble getting into the garage and using the clutch. Need to take it down to at least a 15' there are aftermarket wheels that fit but they will not look right in the car.

What era T bird?

^The real one.

What about a tilt column? Would that be a less noticeable modification?

turboswede wrote: What about a tilt column? Would that be a less noticeable modification?

Would have to be a pretty hefty tilt and be brought up at least two inches as well. Right now its sawing my meat and two veg when I turn, the tilt would just put it in my stomach.

Its not like I am a very big guy as well. People in the 50's must have been much smaller.

I'm assuming you mean a 55-57, since their wheels are absurdly large. I have a tilt column in mine--hated to give up the original, but it had to go to make room for the headers.

I think resizing that wheel would be incredibly difficult, or incredibly expensive. Finding a smaller aftermarket wheel that you can live with would be much easier.

In reply to Will:

They make a 57 Tbird 15 in ch wheel for about 250$ which is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. But its black not red, which can be solved with a leather wrap. Plus its a 57 wheel, I really want to keep the factory wheel. I was actually thinking of cutting the bottom rung out of the wheel kind of like this but well attractive. Maybe make it flat on the bottom. Clearly leave the top.

But 55 wheels are really uncommon.

How about a similar vintage Ford Factory Wheel?
Maybe something else from the era in the Ford line-up was a bit smaller.
Keep the original wheel on hand so the car can be sold with what is needed to take the car back to original.
Also, keeping that original wheel in a box and out of the elements will assure better "wear" on the rare original wheel.

Some quick googling brings up this which has some remanufactured samples reduced from original size.
http://www.qualityrestorations.com/ford.html

After looking up a picture of a '55 Thunderbird interior online, It's not just the rim of the wheel - once it was cut down you'd have to do something about the horn ring as well.

There are places that restore steering wheels (basically, they recast the plastic over the steel structure) but that sort of thing costs a LOT of money.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/smaller-55-t-bird-steering-wheel.408417/

put on smaller 57 style wheel, keep original. do not cut it especially if it's a 1 year only part.

This may sound blasphemous, but what about using something like a mid 50's Corvette wheel or a smaller aftermarket repro? At least it would look period correct.

Avoid Grant steering wheels. They are garbage.

Casco's 57 wheel is certainly the easy button. Their site says they will color match for a few bucks, so you're not stuck with black.

These guys - http://www.qualityrestorations.com/ford.html - don't show a reduced diameter '55 Tbird wheel, but they do have reduced diameters of others, so maybe worth a call.

DILYSI Dave wrote: Casco's 57 wheel is certainly the easy button. Their site says they will color match for a few bucks, so you're not stuck with black. These guys - http://www.qualityrestorations.com/ford.html - don't show a reduced diameter '55 Tbird wheel, but they do have reduced diameters of others, so maybe worth a call.

Actually I ahve been talking withe guys at Quality for a day or two to see if they have anything in stock that will work. They say that you cannot shrink down a 55 TBird wheel due to the center being so large. After a good look over it I agree. Looks like a 65 mustang wheel will fit the splices. Got to be able to find one of those on craigslist for the time being.

When I saw the thread title, my first thought was '55 T-bird. My mom always wanted one (maybe she wanted to pretend she was in American Graffiti?) and about 15 years ago my dad found her a nice restored one. It was beautiful. Neither of them could drive it because the steering wheel. He ended up not buying the car because of it. She didn't want a car that was pretty, but was a PITA (or more accurately, a PITLegs) to drive.

Good luck on figuring something out that works aesthetically and does not devalue the car. Sounds like there are optionms out there and that it may make sense to leave the original wheel as is instead of modifying it.

Lower the seat? Miata style foamectomy? When I re-did the seats on the MGB, I ended up quite a bit higher than stock. Not an issue for me, but it might be the root cause of your problem.

I think that the root cause of the problem is the bigass steering wheel. If they changed it by '56, then that lends credibility to the idea that they made it too big.

So made a call to one of the local thunderbird dudes. His opinion is to get a cheap 65 mustang 14' wheel with adapter for ~150$ and then swap for shows. He said you can spend 350 on the smaller 15' wheel, for the 57, but its almost not small enough plus not really the same looking as the 55. If anybody runs across this one do it on the power steering cars or your going to get a workout.

The wheel should be easy to pull for me with the pullers that I have.

I don't know if the power steering box on the 55 is the same as the non-power box original to my 57, but the amount of steering input necessary on mine would make me hesitant to D-shape the wheel.