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ZL1 Suede Steering Wheel Swap!

98K views 145 replies 66 participants last post by  16HeronSS 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
some of you might have already seen in this in the Facebook group but just incase...



this is a factory ZL1 Suede and Red Stitched Steering wheel i just installed earlier today!! again this is actually a factory ZL1 Steering wheel from GM with the ZL1 trim just changed to a an SS trim from another GM.



i think the trim in carbon fiber will go really well when i get a chance to do one down the road.

in addition this wheel feels so awesome in your hands! if you haven't noticed it matches exactly to the current suede and the red trim already in the SS.




one thing you must know is this is NOT a direct swap. though the wheel and air bag swap right over, all wiring, controls and air bag spring base have to be swapped. also know the trim on the ZL1 wheel is different, so SS trim will not swap over at all. (well unless you start making some mods to the steering wheel). you will have to use the SS controls in this wheel since the ones that come with the ZL1 are missing features and wires. modifications will also need to be done to the steering wheel controls to be able to get the controls to work with the ZL1 trim.

anyhow this factory Genuine GM wheel is a SUPER DEAL! starting on my website at only $199.00! this is an awesome upgrade!!! you can order yours here: https://www.maverickmancarbon.com/collections/chevy-ss-sedan-parts/products/zl1-suede-steering-wheel-with-red-stitching
 
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#48 ·
By any chance did you take any photos while doing this, or have any instructions on taking the center console apart?

I agree maybe this needs to be a new thread, or maybe a "how to" thread! :2cents:
 
#45 ·
[thinks he needs to change OP to say suede shift knob soon]
 
#46 ·
I have a ZL1 with the Alcantara steering wheel.

I think you need to be careful with hand lotions and driving gloves, that aside, after about 5k miles on the ZL1, no signs of wear.

From Gen 5 forum, supposedly soap and water and you're good to go.

I worried about it at first because I can have sweaty hands - - don't give it a second thought now.

Does have a nice feel and looks good, not sure how much trouble I'd go through to change it as stock wheel is nice, but it is a relatively inexpensive mod.
 
#49 ·
And am I right in that you cannot do the black parts like you can with the OEM wheel? I will have to decide on no chrome or a suede wheel.
 
#53 ·
because it feels so good in your hands!

 
#58 ·


Just in case anybody wanted to know what this wheel would look like with Vitesse paddles and a Holden airbag. Patiently waiting for a trim piece to be painted before I can install it. tic toc tic toc....

BTW Eat you heart out Maverick!
 
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#59 ·
lol!

you first!

 
#60 ·
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#61 ·
#65 · (Edited)
I drove my ZL1 daily for 3 yrs and 40k miles. My steering wheel held up just fine. My shift knob however looked like 5 year old bubblegum smashed into a heavily traveled sidewalk. The worst part is that whatever soaked through the Alcantara broke down the glue that held it in place. Ultimately, the Alcantara on my shifter slid right off like boiled chicken skin revealing a plastic knob covered in a slimy sticky residue not unlike honey.

I enjoyed the Alcantara but in my opinion, it was not worth the premium price. I feel it's impractical in most of the ways actual suede would be and less practical than standard cloth because of cost. It's just synthetic cloth made to simulate hide and to me, it's no more premium than vinyl made to simulate tanned leather.
 
#67 ·
Got mine on this morning, no different than anyone else's here.

Getting the buttons out of the covers was a pain, i snapped 2 on each cover. In the end only 1 on each held onto the SS buttons but once installed it's very sturdy. The center bolt for the steering wheels was VERY tight on mine. Otherwise install went well, did it in the parking lot at work. All in all it took me about an hour to do.

Untitled by sicklyscott, on Flickr
 
#68 · (Edited)
haa haa it is a pain but well worth it as you know now. i had a few other guys pick these up and after i ran them though the process of the swap they love it!

as far as cost on this it is well worth the money as you know. . if one thinks $200 bucks or so for a OE wheel is too much for an upgrade like this.... then you better price some OEM ones also any after market steering wheels will run you the same without the possibly of using the OEM airbag.

for the worry warts most ZL1 guys will tell you their held up well. i looked into this myself before doing this swap as well. i have had suede sparco wheels before and some will tell you they don't hold up. but mind was always fine. again it is about how you take care of it. like any part of car you must take care of it. some people will tell you something doesn't last but then again when you actually look at their car it is a mess and it is obvious they never take care of their car. it is all about care! trust me i see this in my carbon fiber parts all the time. think about leather, it cracks, people who don't take care of it same thing happens... it falls apart... heck look at some of the new SS stocl wheels some guys have been having issues with their wheels falling apart too... everything has a shelf life. yes some more then others but again it is all about care. IMO if you are one of those once a year spray wax kinda guys you're gonna have problems. ;) lol!
 
#69 ·
I just want to add that I wanted this for my track event at VIR this past weekend, I thought it would help a bit with grip....and it did. Much more comfortable for bare hands to hold.

I did have a problem with the installation where I didn't tighten down the screws for the spring plate enough and the horn wouldn't work. I read a post here that said if you tighten it down too much the horn won't work either but after studying the parts I think the bolts have a shoulder on them that allows them to be fully torqued which not restricting the movement of the plate. Just thought it was worth mentioning.
 
#70 · (Edited)
Wheel and Shifter Swap – Pictorial

Just finished the swap and thought I’d add in my pictures and notes from the process. Just to note: my dad is a very talented engineer and craftsman, and he takes great pains to point out the stupid stuff he did during projects so that I can learn from them. See if you can figure out where I was doing stupid stuff before I did. :) I'll come clean as I type.

M6 Shifter Swap:

Parts list
Knob: 24261463
Boot: 24261464

Removing the factory shifter



1) Grab the silver trim pieces to the left (1) and right (2) of the shifter and pull towards the back of the car. It’s tough to get a hold of without your trusty interior trim tools. I got a medium quality set off of amazon years ago and am glad to have them in my tool kit.
a. Note that I removed the screws above the numbers in the picture below – it wasn’t necessary.​
2) Pull up on the gloss black trim piece (3) surrounding the shifter. You’ll have to pull harder than you want to. It’ll pop off all at once and will scare you.
3) Pull the shift boot over the knob to expose the black zip tie (4) directly under the knob. This zip tie holds the boot in place.
4) Remove the torx bolt from the left side of the shifter (5).
*** Note that on my car the torx bolt came out with a bit too much effort and didn’t feel right. I made a note to chase the threads before reassembly ***


Installing the replacement boot



1) Remove the ZL1 boot from the plastic housing that it is installed on by prying open the clips clumsily with a screwdriver … at least, that’s how I did it.

2) Remove the white plastic time bit between the OEM boot and the chrome ring. Sorry – no picture here.

Now, here’s the first place where I made a minor mistake, if only a mistake of efficiency. Someone else posted that he had used a needle and thread to tack the new boot onto this white piece. I thought about that, and decided that some adhesive would probably be much easier. That said, my can of adhesive was 20 miles away, so I used the needle and thread method. It worked just fine, but was more of a pain in the rear that the glue would have been. I’ll give you my process anyway:

3) Drill some very small holes parallel to each other into the white trim to allow for sewing. Lower would have been better here.



4) In order to avoid the extra material issue that other folks had, I simply ran the boot further down until the trim ring fit without excess. Don’t worry - there’s plenty of slack for shifting and it looks good too.
5) Stitch the white ring to the boot to secure it.
a. I haven’t ever done this before, so I’m sure I buggered this up. No worries – the trim rings help to hold it in place.​



6) Reassemble the trim and pat yourself on the back.



Anyone see it yet? Yeah, I sewed the dumb thing on backwards. The fatter part should go toward the front of the car and the stitching should go toward the bottom. After re-doing my work it looks like this:



Reassembly

1) Reassembly is the reverse order for the trim and is easy
2) Install the new knob onto the shifter, but note that the mounting hole in the shift knob is on the right instead of the left as on the OEM part. That shouldn’t have been a big deal …

*** Remember how I said I had a note to chase those threads? Yeah, well … I didn’t. Guess what? Snap. After quite a bit of cursing and two broken extractors I ended up drilling and tapping a new hole on the other axis. Yeah … I know … I didn’t like it either. Works fine, of course, but ****. ***

When all’s said and done it should look like this:





Steering Wheel Swap:

Parts List

Wheel: 22896546
Switches: 92256901; 92256902

I slacked off on this one and didn’t take enough pictures – please forgive me. I ordered new switches for this partially to leave my OEM wheel completely intact, and partially because I wanted to take my time here. It’s a $50 delta.

Prepare the new wheel (I didn't have a shot of this, so I'm notating a picture of the new wheel after installation. Just play along)

1) Unplug the two switches (1 &2) from either side of the wheel.
2) Starting at the top of the black trim (3 & 4) gently pull up on the trim. It will peel off all the way down to bottom of the silver trim.



3) Remove the button clusters from the trim by releasing the clips. I broke a few of these, but they’re for the Camaro, so I didn’t mind.

Here’s what they look like – note the bosses on the bottom. Those are what secure the switches to the wheel itself.



4) Attempt to install the SS button clusters into the ZL1 wheel.
a. There will be a couple of clips and standoffs that are in the way. Trim them off. That will include a clip on each switch cluster.​

*** I know, I know – it’s sacrilege to do that sort of stuff, but I promise to bosses will be the more important mechanical connection to the wheel. Also, remember that I bought new clusters, so I didn’t dink the original part.***

5) Once you know the switches will fit flush install the trim and along with the switches into the ZL1 wheel.
a. If the trim doesn’t feel solid, make sure the various clips are all interacting with the wheel correctly. It should be very solid.

Remove the old wheel:



1) Start the car and turn the steering wheel 180 degrees. (do this before step 2 … ask me how I know)
2) Disconnect the negative battery terminal in the trunk and wait a few minutes. No one wants to eat airbag.
3) Take a flathead screwdriver (or something similar) and insert it into one of the two access holes on the back of the wheel.
a. The handle should be in the middle of the wheel with the tip pointing outward​
4) Gently pry inward until you feel a very gentle pressure – that’s the airbag spring (1).
a. After some trial and error you’ll get both clips to release and the airbag will come free.​
5) Gently pry up on the airbag connector locks (2) to free the airbag.
6) Store airbag with the logo up on the passenger foot well.
7) Disconnect the button cluster wiring harness (3)
a. The airbag harness is not connected to the wheel and will pull through​
8) Use a Torx T-50 with an extension and a long ratchet to loosen the main bolt (4)
a. Note that a gorilla on meth installed this thing and you’ll have to work hard to remove it.​
9) Pull straight back on the wheel to remove.


Reinstallation is the reverse order of removal. I added more blue lock-tite to the main bolt to mimic the factory. All in all, I think it was worth it. It feels great in hand and, in my opinion, feels like a more quality material than the OEM parts.


 

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#77 ·
Just finished the swap and thought I’d add in my pictures and notes from the process.

M6 Shifter Swap:

Parts list
Knob: 24261463
Boot: 24261464
:bowing:

Absolutely awesome pictorial and writeup. I only had two issues with the knob and boot swap on my 2015.



(1) The Camaro knob (same p/n) I received had a 16mm internal diameter, but on my SS the knob and shaft were 14mm, which meant I had to insert some 1mm thin shim stock that I curled into a roughly 300 degree sweep of a cylinder (leaving a gap for the screw.) The Camaro screw hole was on the passenger side, but since the threads are tapped all the way through the shifter shaft, this wasn't a problem.

(2) The distance between the base of the Camaro knob and the center of the hole was about 3mm farther than the similar distance on the SS knob. So I had to sand down the collar of the Camaro knob so that it would seat far enough down to be able to properly thread the retaining screw.


I didn't have to do any stitching; I used rubber cement (contact cement) on the white plastic ring and new boot and it worked well. About the only thing I would do differently would be to trim the new boot prior to gluing it up; the rubber cement kept gumming up the cutting edge on my hobby knife when I was trimming it.

Thanks again!
 
#73 ·
I did this swap and used the instructions provided by walt_mink. I ran into 1 problem I didn't expect. Maveric man does allude to it in the first post, but then it kinda gets lost in the thread. I wanted to preserve my stock wheel entirely, so I ordered new button clusters along with the ZL1 automatic wheel. Turns out, that was not everything I needed to fully preserve the stock wheel.

After getting it all installed per walt_mink's instructions, I went for a test drive and found that not everything worked. Radio controls, cruise and phone controls worked, but lane departure warning and the front collision detection buttons didn't work. After removing the airbag again (which is much harder to access with the ZL1 wheel in place) I found that the wiring harness that came in the ZL1 wheel was not the same as the SS wheel. There were several wires not present in wiring harness in the ZL1 wheel.

I resolved the problem by swapping over the entire "horn plate" along with the attached wiring harness from the stock SS wheel to the Camaro wheel. Pictures are below because I just made up the term "horn plate". Getting the paddle shifter wiring reconnected without removing the wheel or the paddle shifters was a challenge, but doable. After using the horn plate with SS wiring harness, now all functions on the wheel work as expected.

I'm not sure why other's didn't run into this issue. Maybe the ZL1 manual wheel has a wiring harness with all the wires needed. Or maybe there are different runs of the ZL1 wheel and not all have the same wiring harness.


Ultimately, I'm thankful to those who posted their experiences and pictures. I really like how the wheel feels in the hands and the Vitesse paddle shifters swapped right over. For some reason, they feel better with the Camaro wheel. The action is crisper, less mushy. They worked fine with the SS wheel, but feel better with this wheel. I can't explain why, maybe it's in my head.

Here is the Camaro wiring harness on the horn plate.



Here is the SS wiring harness, note there are several more wires into that connector. Those are apparently for the safety features the ZL1 doesn't come with and isn't wired for.




Here are both horn plates together, SS on top, Camaro below:

 

Attachments

#74 ·
I almost buttoned everything up with the wrong harness too. Right before I popped the airbag back on, I double checked the wires and noticed the ZL1 wheel was 4 wires short of the stock harness. Reread the first post on this thread and figured that was what Mav was referring to.
 
#75 ·
that is why when people buy this thing from me i will make sure i run each person though the install. ;)
 
#76 ·
Been a couple of weeks since I installed the ZL1 wheel. I have found that I like it much more than I expected. Feels great in the hands, slightly less diameter and slightly less rim thickness just fit my hands better than the SS wheel did. The Vitesse shift paddles operate with a more pleasant feel with the ZL1 wheel than the SS wheel. The action is more crisp and the reach is easier. So far, I haven't found any downsides. I'll hold onto my stock SS wheel for when I get rid of the car in about 9-10 years, but at this point I plan to leave this wheel installed for the duration of my ownership.
 
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