How to Replace Steering Wheel 2006-11 Honda Civic
Created on: 2018-01-16
How to replace the steering wheel on 08 Honda Civic.
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step 1 :Disconnecting the Negative Terminal
- Disconnect the negative battery terminal with a 10mm wrench
- Wait for three minutes
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step 2 :Removing the Airbag
- Pry off the trap door on the bottom of the steering wheel
- Disconnect the connector
- Disconnect the horn connector
- Remove the three T30 Torx bolts from the bottom the steering wheel
- Pull the air bag out
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step 3 :Removing the Steering Wheel Column
- Pry out the lower dash trim
- Pull the lock down on the steering wheel
- Lower the steering wheel down
- Press the lock up
- Tighten the three Phillips head screws into each of the openings
- Pry out the trim from the steering wheel
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step 4 :Removing the Steering Wheel
- Remove the 14mm bolt from the steering wheel with a puller tool
- If the wheel gets locked, put the key in and unlock it
- Disconnect the connector
- Remove the bolt
- Pull the steering wheel off of the splines
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step 5 :Installing the Steering Wheel
- Feed the wire through the steering wheel opening
- Press the steering wheel on
- Connect the connector
- Tighten the 14mm bolt by hand
- Torque the steering wheel center bolt to 29 foot-pounds
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step 6 :Installing the Steering Wheel Column
- Press the top steering wheel trim on
- Press the bottom steering wheel trim on
- Tighten the three Phillips screws to the lower steering wheel column
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step 7 :Installing the Air Bag
- Connect the horn connector
- Connect the air bag connector
- Clip the air bag in
- Tighten the three T30 Torx bolts
- Press on the trap door
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step 8 :Reconnecting the Negative Battery Terminal
- Connect the negative battery terminal with a 10mm wrench
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step 9 :Resetting the Light
- Turn the car on
- Wait for the SRS lights to go out
Tools needed
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Socket Extensions
Flat Blade Screwdriver
Torque Wrench
Harmonic Balancer Puller
14mm Socket
Phillips Head Screwdriver
T30 Driver
10mm Socket
Ratchet
Needle nose pliers
Trim Tool Set
Pick
Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!
Using a 10mm wrench, disconnect the negative battery terminal and wait three minutes. Remove this door at the bottom of the steering wheel. Use a flat bladed screwdriver—pop it open. Pull it out. Yellow connector in here, and pull that out of there. A black lock on it. Slide that up to unlock it. At the same time you pull it apart. So now the airbag is disconnected.
Going to need to unbolt it. Use a T30 Torx inside this hole, there's a bolt. There's one on each. Should have new ones on hand before you remove these. Going to have to feel for it. Do the same for the other side. Just kind of find it. There's the bolts. With that removed, those bolts removed, this airbag should come out. You have to unplug the horn connection, which is down here. Should have done that before I pulled it all the way out. It's kind of hard to see, it says push right here. Push in on that lock. And it should pull right out. So the yellow is your airbag power. This is your horn. That's your airbag.
To remove this lower dashboard trim, it just clips into place. And reach your hand behind it, just kind of gently pull out. It'll unclip. Some clips on the top. There's clips here. Just unclips. We'll put that aside in the backseat. To get these plastics off that are around the steering column. I'm going to pull the lock down, lower it, and lock it in place. You'll probably have to move the handle at some point.
I'm going to take my Phillips head screwdriver. There's three Phillips head screws—one in each of these openings. This one's easiest to see. Start with this one. Put that aside. Feel for the screw up here. This one doesn't want to come out, it's got a pretty big washer on it, if I look inside, when I looked inside there. So it's kind of stuck in the plastic. It should fall out when I take this apart—we'll just watch for it. So I'm going to remove this one, too. So I just kind of wiggled it a bit and both screws fell out. This should separate now.
Need to remove the plastics from the steering column. We need to take a plastic trim tool and separate them. Just kind of slide the tool in between the two halves, help pop it apart. The top bit will come right out. The bottom one, probably have to fish it around the lever. Just take this out, put it aside. Before you remove the steering wheel make sure it's turned so that it's aligned in the center and that the wheels of the car are pointing straight ahead.
Loosen the 14mm bolt that's holding the steering wheel on using a 14mm socket ratchet extension. That usually breaks free. If it locks the wheel that's okay. Put the key back in and unlock it. Now if you take this all the way out and you try to pull the steering wheel off it's not going to want to come off. And if you're trying to pull on it like this it might break free and hit yourself in the face, and then you'll hurt yourself. Also, you shouldn't be hitting on the steering column or anything to try and remove this.
You're going to need a puller tool, and get the appropriate size bolts to go into these two threaded openings. You don't want to thread them in too far. Reset this. I think I'm going to use it without the point. So just thread these bolts in just by hand until they stop. You don't want to go too far because you'll hit the clock spring and damage it. So just like a few turns in, they get tight like that. We'll spin this out and we'll meet the head of the bolt. Make sure that this has enough loose thread so that the steering wheel can actually move.
With our puller on there, use the appropriately sized socket for it. This one is a three quarter inch. And we're going to tighten it in. That broke our steering wheel free. Sometimes these take a lot of force and it'll snap, but if you've got the bolts in there it should pop off. So take these puller bolts out. Put this all aside, you're done with it. Pull this bolt out. Before we get too far, there's an electrical connection here. You're going to want to unplug that. It's kind of hard to get my finger in here to unlock it, so I'm going to push it with the plastic trim tool, and then I can pull this out. Just like that. Undo the bolt. The steering wheel will come off the splines. Feed the wire through the opening. And there's our steering wheel.
When you reinstall the steering wheel, the steering wheel does have splines in it, as does the steering column. So make sure that you line it up nice in the middle, don't put it crooked because then your wheels will be off. Make sure that stays right where it needs to be. Also need to feed this wire up and through the opening. There are two yellowish orange dowels that are going to line up with the two openings here. And there's also a bit of an alignment mark right here in the plastic trim that kind of lines up at the opening between these two arrows. So that looks nice and straight. I can plug this connector in right now. Just be careful when you're putting this in. I clipped this connector and this wire got pushed up here.
I actually want it to run down underneath. So I'm going to remove this connector or disconnect it. And fish this wire for the airbag underneath. That's better. That's the way I want it run. Now I can plug this in. Click those back in. It's nice and lined up. This is going to go through here and underneath for now. Take our steering wheel bolt and install it. Get the torque wrench and set it 229 foot-pounds. Use the extension to get in here. Hold the steering wheel and just torque this. When it clicks, the torque is set.
Start with the top trim, just slide it in here, like this. It should sit just on top like that. Take the lower cover—might have to fool with the lever. Maneuver it up in here. Clip that down and lock it if it'll move on me. Lift it up. With those clipped in, we reinstall the screws.
The steering column has three screws. These two go into the plastic. This is the small machine screw that's going to go down here in the bottom. I can move this around a bit and thread this in. Just tighten it up. I don't have to kill it, but just enough. And of course reinstall these. And the same for the other one. They're not too tight, but they're just going in the plastic.
To reinstall the airbag, got to plug in here. A little tricky to do it with only two hands. So this is the horn—plug this in. Click into place. And this one here, the yellow one, that actually powers the airbag. Of course make sure the battery is still disconnected. You should have disconnected it before getting this far. Plug it back in. It'll lock into place. It's plugged in. These need to be clipped underneath. So I'm going to pull the wires down, around there, and then slide this up into place. It'll sit there. Torx bolts. Without the ratchet attached, I'm just going to use the extension in the socket. Right in the opening here. Do this for both sides. We'll do the same for this side. You might have to push in on the airbag a little bit to get it to line up. Get that threaded in. Tighten it up.
I've turned the steering wheel, so you can see what we're doing better. You don't have to do this part, it's just so you can see it. So this yellow connector, going to push it up into place here. It's going to lock. And then the little white connector will sit right here. I'll take the cover—it has two tabs that line up the openings here, on these two locking tabs. Slide that into place, and push it right in. The airbag is reinstalled.
Then reconnect the negative. This one happens to use a 10mm. Tighten it up. We're going to turn our key on the ignition. We're looking for the SRS lights to go out. So they do their self-check. They've gone out. So you don't have to start the car but you can just turn the wheel back and forth. The light's not coming on, so that means that our airbag and clock spring are all set and they're working properly.
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