Thread: Steering wheel spins freely, what broke?

Originally Posted by scottydoggs

not that ive seen here.

i did mine, it wa sin a regal, close enough tho.

you need to remove the battery cable first. then remove the airbag from the wheel, how you remove it on a gp i dont really know.

the take the steering wheel off, you will need a puller to get it off. also un clip the radio controls before the wheel comes off. and the horn ground, you push it in and tun it, it comes right out.

then take the plastic off the top and bottom of the column, regal had a torx screw on the bottom and the back side was kinda a hinge clip. gp im not 100 % sure.

now that all that's out of the way, you will see the clock spring, it has a spring clip holding it in place, remove that and it comes out.

at the bottom of the dash, where the obd2 port is, if you look next to it, you will see a yellow plug and a black plug right next to each other, un plug them both, those are from the clock spring. you may need to take the lower plastic and steel knee bolster off to get the zip ties cut off the old clock springs wires from the rest of them, mine had 2 zip ties holding them all together.


once out it looks like this.

So it's for sure broke because of those two things, the SRS light and the radio controls, right? I've been looking around for where to buy a replacement clock spring, but I'm not having much luck. Suppose I could pull one from a salvage car right?

Originally Posted by aeidian

So it's for sure broke because of those two things, the SRS light and the radio controls, right? I've been looking around for where to buy a replacement clock spring, but I'm not having much luck. Suppose I could pull one from a salvage car right?

As long as the airbag is not deployed yes.

And is there any issue to not fixing this right away? Just my airbags and radio controls won't work until I do?

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Originally Posted by scottydoggs

yeah if left un repaired its just the air bag light , and radio controls.

search ebay for used clock springs, new ive seen em as high as 250 new, and used as low as 40.

make sure it says w/radio controls, if it has a pic make sure you see two long wires and 2 short wires.

Found a write up on how to fix them by resoldering the ribbon, gonna take a stab at that after I fix the steering shaft.

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Originally Posted by scottydoggs

good luck with that. i'd just get another one and swap it.

Fixing it is free, only cost a little time and I got plenty of time. If it doesn't work then I'll swap it, but from the writeup it looks pretty straight forward.

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I managed to get the shaft reconnected. I had to split both boots (probably didn't need to split the lower one, but I didn't see any other option at the time), lower the cradle, and disconnect the shaft from the column then feed the top part into the slide, then jack the motor back up and reattach the top part of the shaft to column. The alignment seems off a hair, but the shaft only goes together one way, and I didn't disconnect the part that attaches to the rack. I suppose I could have turned the wheel a complete revolution and then reattached, but it doesn't seem like it would have produced a different result. Maybe all the work I've been doing raising and lowering the cradle skewed the alignment. I did replace the passenger motor mount because the one on there was busted, who knows. Any rate it's reattached and turns fine. I'm going to have to replace the leaking rack or at least the seals at some point so at least I know how to disconnect the shaft and pull the rack once I drop the cradle. I haven't done anything with the clockspring yet, I'm gonna look at it tomorrow. My day/night sensor doesn't seem to be working though because the headlights didn't come on unless I turned them on, before I could leave them in the off position and they would come on. Is there anything in the wiring that could have broken that? I did disassemble the dash awhile ago to resolder the connection on the hud per the tech library. I don't drive the car regularly because it's not tagged yet, so it's possible that I didn't reconnect something when I did that.

Got a used clockspring off Ebay for about 40 bucks. Install was pretty smooth. Followed the instructions on the face that said turn all the way clockwise then at least two turns counter clockwise (mine took 3) to get yellow in the window and the arrows lined up. The arrows didn't line up EXACTLY on top of each other, but I noticed when I took the old one off they weren't lined up exactly either. They're about a hair off. Took the car for a ride, steering wheel controls work, airbag light isn't on. So far it's working fine.