02/21/10 - Steering column shim
The
steering wheel always seemed to sit too high up in my car.
Especially with the lower than stock seating, so I decided to
angle it down a bit. It's pretty common for people to do in the
E30 world.
The first step was removing the conical tamper proof bolts that hold
the steering column in place. Here's what they look like:
I tried grabbing them with vice grips. No dice. I'm sure
there's a tool for this, but where there's a will, there's a way:
Welded on a 3/8 bolt... came right off... By my estimates,
the steering wheel sat about 1.25 inches too high. In order
to move the wheel down that amount, I needed to add a 5/8 shim
between the column and the car. I'm typically not a big fan of using
nuts for shims, but it was what I had, and it'll be just fine:
So i didn't take a BEFORE picture, so i tried to simulate the OLD
relation between the wheel and dash by moving the camera down. It
looked something like this when you were sitting in the driver's seat:
And this is how it looks now:
I
also installed the steering colum trim while I was in there, as well as
the "plasti-dipped" console closeoff piece that I made yesterday, looks
sooooo much better in black:
And lastly, shameless self promotion, I landed my first solid backflip
on my snowboard this evening... It's not amazing, but the video
is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY5iLfpqfyc
Keep it real guys!
