ATTENTION:  This is for information purposes only, removing a airbag restraint is not legal in some areas and I do not recommend you do this, there are many dangers involved.  Your ignition should be in the off position and your battery disconnected. 

The stock air bag steering wheel is 15.5" in diameter and not suited very well for spirited driving.  I purchased a Victor four spoke leather steering wheel that is only 13.5" and more ergonomically suited for spirited driving.  This is only a temp upgrade, I have a CLK 55 steering wheel on the way, just need to locate a air bag for it and keeping my fingers crossed that it will actually fit!  The Victor steering wheel uses a five bolt hub, like the Nardi hub, but I found that Grant also makes a nice hub for the 201 chassis and it was much cheaper.

To start, you need to remove the stock air bag, on the 190E, there are two T30 torx nuts accessible through the back of the steering wheel.  You should use a 1/4" T30 torx bit and a medium length 1/4" bit socketed screw driver, a regular length screw driver is too long.  I used a 1/4" bit extension and a ratcheting type screw driver.  Be careful inserting this into the small holes in the back of the steering wheel, my bit came out and it was a pain to retrieve it.

Once the torx screws are out the air bag unit comes right out.  There is a plug on the back of the air bag that needs to be removed, remember that your car needs to be off and the battery disconnected, you don't want the airbag to accidentally deploy in your hands or face!  You would be better off having your local MB dealership perform this, but they will only do this if your replacing your steering wheel with another with a air bag.





Next is to remove the factory steering wheel, there is a 10 mm hex nut that needs to be removed, this puppy is torqued down pretty tight, so you may need a breaker bar on your socket wrench to get it loose.  Be careful that you don't hurt yourself or strip this bolt.  Tightening torque on this nut is listed at 7 nm.  Once the nut is removed, the steering wheel should pull right off.  Make sure that your front wheels are straight before you pull your steering wheel off, this will make it easier to line up your new hub.  The hub slides on over the existing splines and normally has a arrow to indicate which end of the hub faces up.  The MB 10 mm hex nut can then be put back on, I believe the recommended torque for the nut is 7 nm, but check with MB to confirm this.  Also, when bolting your steering wheel on, make sure your nuts are torqued to the recommendation of the hub manufacturer.  Always exercise caution, don't force anything.  The last thing you want is a stripped steering column or nut!

I used a socketed 10 mm hex bit to remove the nut, I am not sure if this is what MB recommends, but it worked for me.

Here is the Victor steering wheel installed.  I did not like the emblem on the horn pad, so I replaced it with a SL hood emblem.  Not that the SL hood emblem looks that much better, but its a temp solution till I get the CLK 55 steering wheel or find a better Mercedes steering wheel emblem.  One last note, if you replace your airbag steering wheel with a non-airbag equipped steering wheel, your SRS light will come on and stay on.  Your option here is to pull your dash cluster and remove the bulb.


On a somewhat different topic (but still under the interior section) if you want original MB all weather mats for your 201 chassis, you can use the 124 chassis all weather mats.  They don't fit perfectly (a little wide) but all that means is that they will curve up your transmission tunnel a bit.  The rears fit almost perfectly.  I picked these mats up cheap and expected to have to cut them to get a good fit.  Lucky for me I did not have to do that.



CLK 55 STEERING WHEEL



I received my CLK 55 steering wheel today, had to wait four weeks since it came from Germany.  A lonely sole replaced it with a new one because the top of the steering wheel (grey part) had the dye coming off (viewable in another picture) so I picked this wheel up for a song!



This is a comparison shot of the stock steering wheel (not the small one above) and the CLK 55 steering wheel, you can see that it is more ergonomic, 1" smaller in diameter and much fatter.




This view is of the back side of the AMG wheel, notice there is no contact ring for the horn or airbag...WTF?  At first I thought that the previous owner removed it, but there is a black filler ring inserted and the screws that would normally hold this contact ring in place have anti-tamper paint on them, so that left me wondering if the CLK 55 used a different type of contact ring, but to top it off there were no wires for the horn or the airbag, so either this wheel never had a bag or the contacts are drastically different.  Anyway, this wheel and my OE wheel are very similar in their internal design, so this allowed me to remove my contact ring from my OE wheel and install it on the AMG wheel. 





The OE wheel used the entire airbag as a horn, you could press any of the four corners to sound the horn, the AMG wheel had two horn buttons next to the airbag (which I don't have yet) so this ruled out the possibility of using my OE airbag.




The entire center section of both wheels also look like they are interchangeable, so I guess if I wanted to have the entire AMG airbag act as a horn (like the OE wheel) I could swap the innards, I may play around with this when I find a suitable airbag but for now I have the original innards in the AMG wheel.  This picture shows the OE wheels stripped of the contact ring and innards.  The AMG wheel had four small bolts that hold the innards to the wheel (there are also four larger ones on the outside of the center ring, visable in the above pictures), those were removed to that I could install the contact ring.  The torx screws from the OE wheel were than utilized to bolt the contact ring in place, the original bolts of the AMG wheel were not used.




This picture shows the top of the steering wheel where the grey dye has worn off.  No actually damage to the wheel or leather.  This really did not concern me since I am going to dye this grey area a light cream color to match my interior, the grey is definitely out of place in my car.  A quick tip, if you are also experiencing areas of wear on your steering wheel, you can pick up a bottle of leather shoe dye at any local store.  Not wax, or buff, make sure the bottle says "shoe dye" or something to that effect indicating you use it before you wax/buff your shoes.  Could also be referred to as color restore.  This stuff works great for renewing your leather steering wheel, made my OE wheel look like new, it was badly worn and faded.




I ended up picking up a 1997 C36 steering wheel to get the airbag, as I wanted the matching AMG labeled bag to go with my CLK55 wheel.  This is what the bag looks like in stock form.




Of course before I color dyed the CLK wheel and airbag, I wanted to make sure it would fit on my 190, so this is just a test fitting to make sure the wheel would mount correctly on my steering column.





I removed the horn buttons to color match them.  They come off rather easy, as they have three tabs that hold them in place.  Just take your time removing them, it would be easy to break a tab.





Here are the buttons after removal.  Make sure not to loose the springs or the horn button cover pieces (little red items), when the first horn button popped off, the spring shot across my garage. 





Before I color dyed the grey parts of the CLK wheel, I used enamel reducer to remove most all of the grey dye, this takes a bit of time as enamel reducer is not the most effective thing to use, but given the fact that I have never dyed leather, I did not want to damage the leather in the process.  You can see from this picture how extensive the masking was.





The horn buttons themselves are not leather, but some sort of soft material over a hard plastic material.  I did not know how the leather dye would hold up on this material, so I prepped it the same way as the CLK wheel.  The initial grey color is a dye and comes off pretty easy exposing a white color material.




For masking of the grey areas, I used regular 3m automotive masking tape, torn into small 1" sections, the tape needs to be fitted very carefully into the gaps between the black leather and the grey leather.  I used a small flat blade screw driver to help position and secure the tape





Here is another picture of the wheel while in the process of being painted, you have to cover everything very well, otherwise you end up with overspray on your black leather.




This picture was taken two days after the grey leather was dyed beige.  You never want to remove your masking tape before everything is completely dry.





This is the finished wheel with airbag.  They dying job turned out great, the leather is soft and pliable





A quick picture of the install of the wheel.  Since I used the stock steering wheel contact ring, I had to run the ground from the horn to the left horn button and then the trigger wire for the horn to the right horn button of the airbag.  Since both buttons are tired together via electronics, pressing either button sounds the horn.





The finished product.  Well worth the effort, looks like the car came from MB with this wheel in it.   One more note, this airbag is 100% compatible and the connector snaps right on, so safety has not been compromised.