Aftermarket Steering Wheel Install

The Sonic wheel is an example of the more common press fit design onto the steering shaft so this is where the tugging and pulling comes into play. Be patient, with enough side to side and up and down movement while pulling towards you the wheel will eventually come off.

Here’s what the Works Bell hub looks like for the Mitsubishi Evolution. It’s different from most as it’s clamped on by two bolts from the top rather than one nut or bolt through the middle.

The installation process is straightforward but the one thing I’ll mention is to make sure you’ve lined the hub up straight. I hope you’ve removed the wheel when it’s in the center position but even then the hub can be one tooth off and you’ll have a crooked wheel. If that happens remove everything and adjust the hub. It’s not fun doing the job twice so do your best align it straight the first time.

Unlike other aftermarket hub manufacturers, Works Bell supplies an airbag resistor that plugs into the OEM connector and won’t trigger the air bag light on your dash.

In the case that you don’t have a resistor, I’ve read that wiring up a 2-amp fuse similar to the resistor shown above will also work at disabling the air bag light.

I taped and tucked it neatly into the hub.

Works Bell also supplies an adapter wire for the horn so that it extends the wire to reach the aftermarket horn and changes the connector to the more common spade style that is used on aftermarket horns.

With the wiring part of the install taken care of, the hub was assembled back together using the six supplied hex bolts.

A common problem that most people run into when installing an aftermarket hub and wheel on older cars is the horn wire doesn’t run through the center of the wheel like the Evo does. Almost every hub that I’ve encountered has a metal backing plate thats connected to the horn and needs to have the horn wire touching it in order to work.

The best solution comes from Honda, it’s an OEM tab (Honda part number 35259-SH3-A02) that you can attach to your steering column and hook up the horn to.

For reference, here it is installed on a Nissan 240SX with a Works Bell short hub. It’s a very simple solution to a common problem!

Getting back to the Evo, with the hub and it’s rubber covering in place the next step was to bolt the quick release to it.