Steering Column

One of the few things I have never liked about the Corvette is the driving position. It seemed no matter how I adjusted the seat or the tilt column I could never find the right spot. Specifically I didn't like sitting so far away from the steering wheel, I have always liked it fairly close.

In most cars you can just move the seat closer and its problem solved. In the Corvette moving the seat closer puts my knees into the bolster and I am unable to use the clutch properly. This problem was very apparent when I went open tracking and felt like I was fighting the car instead of controlling the car. My arms extended straight to the wheel made it a very tiring experience along with making me drive much slower.

After that weekend I started researching options to move the steering wheel closer to the seat.

Option 1 was to buy a telescopic steering column ($350-$400).

Option 2 was to buy a custom made steering wheel with a deeper dish to the wheel ($1,500+).

Option 3 was to buy a quick release steering hub, after market steering wheel, 5 point harnesses to make up for no airbag and a track bar to mount them to ($2,000).

None of those options seemed reasonable at the time, so I did nothing.

A few weeks ago I was looking on Ebay for a trim piece and came across a column for $250.00, so I started searching to see if they had dropped in price. I ended up finding a column from a 2012 with 18k miles on it for $100.00 shipped. It was also a complete column with all the controls, clock spring and trim pieces installed.

After taking the disconnecting the battery the air bag and steering wheel took maybe 15 minutes to remove. Fairly simple stuff, I've had both off the car 3-4 times before. The column itself has one connector for all of the controls and one for the airbags. After disconnecting those, there was one cross bolt though the steering shaft and four bolts holding the column in place.

While the physical structure of the columns were completely different the mounting points and connectors were the same. The mounts are slotted so I was able to move the column towards the driver an additional 1/4" while installing it.

Once installed and after driving the telescopic motor fully extended the column moved the steering wheel 1.5" closer to the driver. Everything on the column worked properly except the telescopic motor, without memory seats in the car there is nothing to power or control the motor. I plan to rectify this with either a pair of relays or an H-Drive circuit, either way should be fairly easy to wire up.

In addition to replacing the column I took the drivers seat out while the steering wheel was removed. Its far from necessary but makes it that much easier to remove. This allowed me to easily access the drivers side seat belt. Over the last year or so it had become very slow to retract and many times would not retract without help. While I was looking for a replacement I came across a video on YouTube where the author claimed he had the fix for most all seat belts with this problem. He went on to explain that the oils from your skin and hands along from dirt the belt attracts would cause it to swell up and then become too large to retract properly. In the video he cleaned about 60% of a belt by soaking it in water mixed with detergent. I basically did the same thing but by removing it I was able to soak closer to 95% of the belt.

This picture shows the belt after soaking for about five hours. The water turned almost oily with a small amount of dirt in the bottom.

After reinstalling it along with the seat the belt retracted like it was a new assembly, I was actually quite suprised that it worked this well.