I love my 1997 (KS3F3UM) Subaru Sambar Super Deluxe Classic…known as “The KS3” for now. I use it as my daily driver back and forth to work, and unless there’s a specific reason why we have to take another vehicle to go somewhere, I’d rather drive it than one of the two new Subaru Crosstreks we have. The Crosstreks are great. Lots of technology. Lots of safety. Totally boring. The Sambar pickup makes me happy when I drive it!
One of the things that had bugged me since I got the truck though was the really skinny steering wheel.
My KV4 (and KV3) have a thicker wheel, and it’s perfectly fine for driving. The KS3 though reminded me of a mid 1970s American car - they had the absolute thinnest steering wheels (and ridiculously boosted power steering). Along with the skinny wheel on my Sambar though was … the ick. The steering wheel is made out of some rubberized plastic, or plasticized rubber. Either way, after 27 years of use and baking in the sun, the wheel was kinda sticky. I tried cleaning it off with those household cleaning wipes. It was then clean, and sticky. Not acceptable. I contacted my toy dealer, Storm Proctor, to help rectify the situation. You’re going to see Storm’s name a lot around here. He’s definitely helped me find cool stuff for my truck and vans!
Storm and I talked about putting a different steering wheel in, and he said that having a steering wheel adapter on there would have the added benefit of moving the wheel out a bit so that it would give me a little more room to get in and out.
Exhibit A: This is what it looks like when you’re 6’6” (198cm) and 300lbs (136kg) and like small vehicles.
So, you want to swap your steering wheel, yes? You’re going to need a few things:
A steering wheel
A steering wheel hub/adapter to fit above listed item
A burning, wretched anger from deep within (more on that later)
For the steering wheel, I went with one that Storm had in stock. I did a little poking around, and I think it was this one. It comes with the six, hex-head screws and an Allen wrench. (No, it’s not a MOMO wheel, but it also doesn’t cost MOMO prices!) If you would like a different wheel, that is entirely up to you. Just make sure that the wheel you get is compatable with the steering wheel hub, which is compatible with the Sambar. Typically, you’re going to find 5 or 6 “hole” wheels. Just make sure the wheel and the hub match number of wheels.
For the steering wheel hub adapter, there are a few decisions to make. This is the one I got from Oh Kei Garage. (The top drop-down has the option for the “Short” one.) There’s also a “taller” one that’s not going to have the issues that we’ll get to here in just a while.
Spoiler alert: we’ll cover what it looks like in a bit, but if you get the “shorty” steering hub, you’re going to run into an issue where the steering wheel hub is so short that the end of the steering wheel shaft will protrude above the “top” of the hub. That can be solved with this spacer. The spacer comes with six hex head screws and an Allen wrench to fasten the spacer to the hub adapter.
So, you’ve got your parts. You’ve cleared your schedule. It’s time to modify!
The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that your front wheels are as straight as you can get them. Yes, there’s some play in the steering wheel, but we want a good reference point where “straight ahead” is. Nobody wants to go down the road with a wheel that’s 5º off center. Not me, that’s for damn sure. (Thanks OCD and Marine Corps!)
I removed the lower steering column surround. You want to remove the screws, not the two (10mm?) bolts in roughly the center of the surround if you look at it vertically. Those hold the whole steering column to the … um… supporty-part. I put them back in once I realized what they were. Removing the lower surround was not entirely necessary, but it did give me a little more room for something coming up soon.
I believe, and of course now cannot check, that the steering wheel had two screws on the back side that held the horn “pad” on. Once you take those out and pull the horn pad off, you’re going to expose the 17mm nut that holds the wheel on the steering shaft. You may need someone to hold the wheel while you loosen the nut, as the wheel is going to turn when you apply counter-clockwise force to the nut. What I ended up doing was using one of my larger-handled ratchet wrenches, and positioning it so that the handle was pointing up. I then took a rubber mallet and whacked the handle of the ratchet (remember…lefty loosey, righty tighty!). It was enough of a shock that it broke the nut loose, and from there I was able to spin it up the shaft.
At this point, you’re going to want to be careful. The potential for self-harm rises greatly above a non-zero chance in this next part. …and now a story to illustrate why:
I used to really be into classic Minis. The small ones. 10” wheels, the “hot” ones had a 1275cc engine, all that. Back in “the day,” we all got our information and entertainment from a forum on the website MiniMania. Well, one time, a user posted why you want to be careful when taking the steering wheel off. Before you start going crazy on the wheel, trying to loosen it from the shaft, you absolutely must take that 17mm nut and spin it back on, just so that the whole nut is grabbing threads near the top of the shaft. Why, you ask? Well, our Mini friend - he was pulling and hitting and hitting and pulling the wheel, tryin to break it loose. It finally did come loose, and it departed the steering shaft at an unholy speed. Said Mini friend smacked himself right in the face. Hard enough to break his nose. Blood everywhere. The worst part? He had to put the wheel back on, and drive himself to the hospital to get checked out. We don’t want that. You don’t want that. For now, we’ll accept our battleship gray interiors, without the blood splatter accents.
Safety lesson learned, we put the 17mm nut back on the top of the shaft enough to engage all the threads. I then took that rubber mallet and started tapping the wheel from the dash side towards me. (This is where it was handy not to have the lower steering column surround removed, as I could hit closer to the center of the steering wheel) You’re going to need to get angry. I mean, REALLY angry. You’re going to have to hit this thing harder than you think you are. Left slide. Right side. Top. Bottom. Then you’ll put the mallet down and sit in the driver’s seat. From there, you’re going to grab the wheel at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock, and you’re going to push. You’re going to pull. You’re going to push one side while you pull the other. Reach back, deep, into that childhood anger. You may have to take a few breaks - I sure did. Eventually though, that damned icky wheel is going to one off, and you’re going to be left with this:
(The little brass pipe sticking up provides the power to the back side of the hub so that the horn works. I think.)
Now what you’re going to want to do is look at your steering wheel and your hub adapter. Both the wheel and the hub adapter had 6 holes. Check. What I later would find out is that when I fastened the steering wheel hub spacer to the hub adapter, it took my carefully aligned holes and offset them a good 10º. Thankfully the hub isn’t on too tight, so a few taps with the mallet and it popped off so I could re-position it with the hub spacer holes where I needed them. It’s also worth noting that your spacer is probably going to have LOTS of holes in it. Just take your wheel and hold it up to the spacer. Slowly rotate the wheel until you see six holes lined up. It may take a few tries, but it’ll work.
So now it’s either time to put the steering wheel hub adapter or the hub adapter and the now-attached spacer to the steering shaft, making sure to keep the holes you’ve identified on the spacer as “true” to the position you want the wheel in as possible.
At this point, I was excited. I had the hub adapter on, and I was ready to bolt up my wheel! <he was sorely mistaken. He was not ready to bolt up the wheel.>
What I learned was that the “shorty” steering wheel hub adapter was, in fact, short. See the silver dingus sticking up in the middle of the hub adapter? That’s the steering wheel shaft. The problem with that is that the horn assembly that goes into the center of the wheel once in situ does not have enough clearance. The result was an always-on horn. Amusing, but also irritating. That’s when I had to stop and wait for the hub spacer to arrive.
So - take II. This is what it looks like with the hub adapter and Mr. Spacer on there.
(If you look closely, you can see where I marked the “top” hole for the wheel to make sure it was straight up, or at 12 o’clock)
See all those different holes I was talking about earlier? You can also see that the red (power) wire has enough room to attach to the back of the horn button and not foul the steering shaft, causing non-stop honking. Oh - note - when attaching the steering wheel hub spacer to the steering wheel hub adapter, get the bolts in finger-tight, and make sure that the spacer is sitting flat on the hub adapter. Then you’re going to want to take that Allen wrench, and work in a “star pattern” as if you were tightening the lug nuts on a car’s wheel. Tighten one a bit, then jump across the spacer, don’t go to the next one to the left or right. Keep “jumping” around the spacer, tightening the bolts. I’m not sure if there’s a recommended torque setting for those, but I went with “Gorilla Tight™.” I figure I don’t want to get into a situation where I’ve got a steering wheel with an attached spacer…not connected to the steering wheel adapter hub! One final note on that - yes, if you get too crazy tightening the bolts down you’re probably going to snap one. Raise your hand if you accidentally over-tightened the lug nuts on the back of one of your classic Minis and snapped the wheel stud… 🤦♂️ So, we’re looking for really tight, but not “ok, so I put it on with 650lbs of torque from my impact wrench” tight.
When you do get the hub adapter and spacer on the steering wheel shaft, make sure that it is seated all the way down. You’re going to want to look at the whole assembly from the dashboard side towards the rear of the vehicle, and you want to see that little brass pipe touching the metal disc on the backside of the hub adapter. This makes the horn go beep.
At this point, it gets a little fiddly. You’ve got your wheel, you’ve got the power and ground wires to the horn, and you need to be able to fasten the wheel to the steering wheel hub spacer - all with two hands. Because nobody loves me and Storm lives too far away, I did this by myself. I figured out that if I gently placed the top hex screw in the wheel and then gently lowered it to the wheel, I could pull the horn wires through the center of the wheel, and then at least get the top screw started to fasten the wheel to the steering wheel hub spacer.
(A pic from before the spacer was installed, but wanted to show you what the connections looked like so you can see why the horn was going off non-stop)
From there it was pretty easy. The horn button gets wired up and put in place, and for this wheel at least, there’s a “beauty ring” for the center of the steering wheel that clamps the horn button down. Same as with the spacer, don’t tighten everything in a circle - do the “jump” across the wheel from one fastener to the next. Keep going until everything is snug, then give it an extra “ungh!” What’s it all look like when you’re done? BAM!
“But hey,” you say. “That shift knob isn’t stock! You didn’t tell us about that one!”
Shift knob (the company, Dewhel, has a TON of different designs for about the same money)
The shift knob comes with three different inserts for different shifter column sizes. The Sambar doesn’t’ need those - it’s M10x1.5, which is the size without the brass inserts.
On my KS3, there was no “pin” holding the gear shifter knob on. I have seen elsewhere that some models had a little pin that you have to use a “drift” or something really skinny to knock out. Mine just twisted right off. To get it to break loose though I had to put quite a bit of torque on it.
The new shift knob looks great, has a good weight to it, 200 grams (7.06 ounces, or almost ½ a pound.)
I am very happy that I was able to score such a great KS3. The truck has just over 34,000km (21,100 miles) and is in really good shape for its age. Other than some dents on the lower back of the cab, the bed, and scratches on the bed rails, she’s great. Truck needs a name though! I can’t keep calling it “The KS3” forever. This truck is a great platform to start with, and I’m super excited for the future!
We gotta do something about all that gray. It’s killing the retro vibes!
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