AJPuleo23
Member
First, I'll preface this by saying I may be a lunatic and second I probably have self diagnosed OCD.
This adventure started last summer when I left my T4R at a 4WP on the east coast to get an alignment. When the truck was done and I was on my way home I noticed something wasn't the same with the OG steering wheel.
Be it the pandemic, be it a careless tech, I don't know. But they wiped my steering wheel with something that basically melted the leather sheen off of it in ~50% of the wheel. Should I have turned around and went back? Probably. But I also have self doubt and figured they'd question my sanity. That said, I know my cars and I know that I did not do this to my wheel before I left it there.
My guess, is they put in some sort of policy to wipe surfaces down with some sort of freakin acid or something during the pandemic. That or a careless tech used brake clean on it or something, i have no idea. But every time I've driven it over the last 6+ months it has irked me. I've spent that time trying to get the feel of my wheel back by putting all kinds of leather restoration/reconditioning rubs on it - but it was never the same. For context, here are the pics of my wheel. See the shine at the top of the wheel versus the bottom.
As most know, posting images on this forum is a bear but hopefully with this you can see the sheen on the 1 side of the wheel versus the other. And it was not just the look that drove me crazy, but the feel of the wheel itself. It felt like sandpaper at first. And this is after months of trying to get it back to what it was.
So, I then decided I was going to swap in a different wheel. First went with the celica/mr2/supra/rav4 Altezza style wheel. However, with the wheel I swapped in I decided to go with the vinyl route and not the leather because it was hard to find a leather wheel with only the cruise control lever with it. Many had up/down buttons on the wheel etc. Well after a few weeks of running this wheel, it too did not feel 'normal' to me.
For 1, its smaller than the OG t4r wheel, it wasn't leather, and just didn't feel right. It's cool to have a sporty looking wheel if that is what you're after, but this one wasn't for me.
So it was back to combing through eBay wheels and other forums to find the right one. I knew I wanted a toyota, leather, black, 3 spoke wheel with cruise control. I typically try to keep everything mod-related as OEM+ as I can get it And here's what I ended up with.
Its a 2002 Camry SE wheel as far as I know based on the research I've done. I had to buy the airbag separately - likely because the original had deployed. eBay for that too...
I stumbled upon https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/steering-wheel-conversion.343764/ where it looks like there was a member there who swapped in this wheel with a different gen camry, so I loosely followed his lead and here's what the airbag swap looks like. I then made sure to watch Tim's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kByS-4puf0 for the wheel swap tutorial.
I used my OG clock spring and cruise control male connections, and cut the camry wheel cruise control lever and ground. Then used heat shrink connectors for the 3, positive, negative and ground connections.
I sacrificed the female connector from the rav4 steering wheel, which can be added back if I wanted to but this was more of a proof of concept (at the time) and I figured I'd spare my OG airbag even if 4WP borked my wheel.
Following the write up on TN I ran the presumably negative black wire from the back of the camry airbag to the yellow wire of the t4r harness, and the red positive wire from the airbag to the blue harness wire by just following the wires and how they connected (toyota used brown wires at the connectors which complicates things a little bit). I taped back the blue/yellow connection from the black airbag connector and gave it a go.
I will say that this was all done based on the write up I found on TN. I searched this forum and dont think I came across this swap, yet. So take it for what it is. I am going to assume that this was done correctly. The cruise control functions as it should as does the horn - no airbag lights (assuming there would be one if I screwed this up) If anyone with more knowledge about this can chime in - I'd be happy to know that it is wrong so that the airbag does not deploy... That said, first test drives are successful so far.
Cheers
This adventure started last summer when I left my T4R at a 4WP on the east coast to get an alignment. When the truck was done and I was on my way home I noticed something wasn't the same with the OG steering wheel.
Be it the pandemic, be it a careless tech, I don't know. But they wiped my steering wheel with something that basically melted the leather sheen off of it in ~50% of the wheel. Should I have turned around and went back? Probably. But I also have self doubt and figured they'd question my sanity. That said, I know my cars and I know that I did not do this to my wheel before I left it there.
My guess, is they put in some sort of policy to wipe surfaces down with some sort of freakin acid or something during the pandemic. That or a careless tech used brake clean on it or something, i have no idea. But every time I've driven it over the last 6+ months it has irked me. I've spent that time trying to get the feel of my wheel back by putting all kinds of leather restoration/reconditioning rubs on it - but it was never the same. For context, here are the pics of my wheel. See the shine at the top of the wheel versus the bottom.
As most know, posting images on this forum is a bear but hopefully with this you can see the sheen on the 1 side of the wheel versus the other. And it was not just the look that drove me crazy, but the feel of the wheel itself. It felt like sandpaper at first. And this is after months of trying to get it back to what it was.
So, I then decided I was going to swap in a different wheel. First went with the celica/mr2/supra/rav4 Altezza style wheel. However, with the wheel I swapped in I decided to go with the vinyl route and not the leather because it was hard to find a leather wheel with only the cruise control lever with it. Many had up/down buttons on the wheel etc. Well after a few weeks of running this wheel, it too did not feel 'normal' to me.
For 1, its smaller than the OG t4r wheel, it wasn't leather, and just didn't feel right. It's cool to have a sporty looking wheel if that is what you're after, but this one wasn't for me.
So it was back to combing through eBay wheels and other forums to find the right one. I knew I wanted a toyota, leather, black, 3 spoke wheel with cruise control. I typically try to keep everything mod-related as OEM+ as I can get it And here's what I ended up with.
Its a 2002 Camry SE wheel as far as I know based on the research I've done. I had to buy the airbag separately - likely because the original had deployed. eBay for that too...
I stumbled upon https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/steering-wheel-conversion.343764/ where it looks like there was a member there who swapped in this wheel with a different gen camry, so I loosely followed his lead and here's what the airbag swap looks like. I then made sure to watch Tim's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kByS-4puf0 for the wheel swap tutorial.
I used my OG clock spring and cruise control male connections, and cut the camry wheel cruise control lever and ground. Then used heat shrink connectors for the 3, positive, negative and ground connections.
I sacrificed the female connector from the rav4 steering wheel, which can be added back if I wanted to but this was more of a proof of concept (at the time) and I figured I'd spare my OG airbag even if 4WP borked my wheel.
Following the write up on TN I ran the presumably negative black wire from the back of the camry airbag to the yellow wire of the t4r harness, and the red positive wire from the airbag to the blue harness wire by just following the wires and how they connected (toyota used brown wires at the connectors which complicates things a little bit). I taped back the blue/yellow connection from the black airbag connector and gave it a go.
I will say that this was all done based on the write up I found on TN. I searched this forum and dont think I came across this swap, yet. So take it for what it is. I am going to assume that this was done correctly. The cruise control functions as it should as does the horn - no airbag lights (assuming there would be one if I screwed this up) If anyone with more knowledge about this can chime in - I'd be happy to know that it is wrong so that the airbag does not deploy... That said, first test drives are successful so far.
Cheers
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