1968 Imperial Tilt and Telescope Steering Wheel.

[Guest]

Does anyone know of a good source for rebuilding the captioned steering wheel? I am told that Chrysler bought these from General Motors so that a Cadillac wheel would fit.

What is needed is for the translucent blue plastic to be redone. The plastic is only on the top and bottom of the wheel with the horn assembly dividing it.

[Guest]

I had a T/T wheel recast for my 1966 Plymouth Fury. The shape of the wheel is the same for Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler and Imperial for 1966, 67 and 68. I sent my wheel to Quality Restorations in Poway CA, 858-271-7374 (Dennis Crooks). He made a mould and cast a new wheel. Mine was the first that he did so he now has the mould. He charged $550 including mould construction. The translucent blue may be tuff to do; he paints the wheel after casting. He did an excellent job. It may be worth a call to see if he can do translucent.

[NTX5467]

As with later Chrysler steering columns sourced from Saginaw Gear division of GM, they might have been built by GM, but they were built to Chrysler specs and that's where any differences will come from. The Chrysler search tuner radios were sourced from Delco, but they sound much better than ANY Delco radio of that period.

The column in my '80 Newport looks just like a GM column on the outside, but the insides are different and seem to be of a higher level of design than what's in the similar GM/Saginaw columns. The Chrysler columns also seem to have a higher quality "feel" to them than the similar year GM columngs too. Might be a higher quality grease for the bearings or something?

I agree that the translucent steering wheels look really nice, especially since Ford or GM didn't do them. As I recall, some of the colors in the Chrysler steering wheels were more "see through" than others, but weren't quite solid colors as later years were. Might have been some metallic tints too, to match the metallic tint in the trim codes of the interior colors too.

Enjoy!

NTX5467