steering column / wheel

['67bronc]

I recently bought a '67 bronco. Does anyone know if there is an easy way to shorten the steering column to provide a little more room inside? Or would the best bet be to buy a new steering wheel that is much flatter than the stock wheel? Would a smaller diameter wheel be significantly harder to turn without power steering?

 

[BroncoJoe19]

I recently bought a '67 bronco. Does anyone know if there is an easy way to shorten the steering column to provide a little more room inside? Or would the best bet be to buy a new steering wheel that is much flatter than the stock wheel? Would a smaller diameter wheel be significantly harder to turn without power steering?

The short answer is "that depends" It depends upon how much smaller you go.

I don't know what size diameter wheel you currently have, but on my '90 with power steering it is 15" in diameter. I am guessing that the older non-power steering broncs had slightly larger steering wheels.

I looked this up...

Torque is defined as: The measure of the force applied to produce rotational motion (usually measured in foot-pounds). Torque is determined by multiplying the applied force by the distance from the pivot point to the point where the force is applied.

SO to use round numbers, IF your wheel started out at 16 inches in diameter, that gives you an 8 inch radius. If one was to apply one pound of force, one would generate 8 inch pounds of torque.

IF one changed to a wheel that had only 6 inches of radius, and one applied one pound of force, one would generate 6 inch pounds of torque. So we could calculate by dividing OldRadius/NewRadius times 100% in order to generate the same 8 inch pounds of torque.

In this example 8/6 X 100%= 133% therefore to go from a 16" wheel to a 12" wheel you would have to apply 133% of the original force to steer.

OK.. playing with some numbers, it looks like for each inch in DIAMETER you decrease the size of the wheel, it will increase the difficulty of turning by about 7-8%

 

[Bully Bob]

"Does anyone know if there is an easy way to shorten the steering column to provide a little more room inside?"

This can be done..but not cheap, or easy. Some prefer installing a late model tilt colum, etc.

Or would the best bet be to buy a new steering wheel that is much flatter than the stock wheel? Would a smaller diameter wheel be significantly harder to turn without power steering?

I use the flat 15" with the immitation leather grip....on power & non-power steering. In both cases, it's much better than the "boat-helm" hard plastic stock wheel. (AZ,etc. has them, pretty reasonable)