<VV> pulling steering wheel/professional repair

[Chris & Bill Strickland]

>I would  love to hear how you do it, as I tried many ways before I had 
>the puller,  and still half heartedly try ...
>

I've worked with my friend Roger for a good number of years, starting 
Back When doing alignments on the Chrysler series K-member cars for a 
dealer -- if the steering wheels weren't perfectly straight (Chrysler's 
quality control wasn't really sharp on the cars we saw), we'd just move 
the wheel a spline or two -- one of us would pull on the wheel, and the 
other would hold a ball peen hammer on the shaft (centered by the nut 
turned mostly off) and strike it with a second hammer, and the wheels 
would generally just pop off -- sometimes a second, harder, strike was 
required.  Replacing damamged K-members on mostly newish cars was 
another well-paying pastime.

Since this has mostly been as paid employment as an ASE certified 
mechanic, I suppose it qualifies as "professional".  Often, the only 
difference between "professional" and "back yard" or "shade tree" can be 
that paycheck.   There are still a lot of folks that consider Smokey 
Yunick to be a back yarder, because he did not complete any formal 
education.  So there is a lot of gray area here regarding "professional".

Okay, I am not a "gorilla" -- acutally my upper body strength is 
somewhat modest for a former oarsman -- but while waiting for Roger to 
find the right hammers, I found I could occasionally just pull a wheel 
off.  So I started to become more determined about it, sometimes using 
knees, but rarely finding a wheel that came off  with "half hearted" 
effort.  It is sort of a mind over matter zen-ish thing -- you have to 
"know" that wheel is coming off -- yes a little gentle working back and 
forth can help (alternately pulling harder on one side than the other, 
but still pulling on both sides) --  and not all wheels come off without 
a puller, but a surprising majority do.  A good solid brake pedal 
mounting helps, too -- ioe, no cars you can put your feet through the 
floorboards.  It is a sorta a ya have to do one once to think you can do 
it more than once.  A puller will work, but it is not faster, 
remembering time is money when working "professionally".

I do not choose to try pulling antique, flat, or valuable steering 
wheels this way.  I have a good puller and know how to use it when 
needed. You've seen wheels bent up in crashes, well, you can also bend 
and crack them pulling from other than the center hub, so some caution 
is reccomended, especially disconnecting air bags and not fully removing 
the nut off the shaft.

The hammer strike thing is not probably not doing the steering gear much 
good, either, fwiw.

Bill Strickland