Works Bell, the bell works?

If you're familiar with Works Bell, you know they make some fun car parts. I picked myself up a Rapfix II quick release for my car.

Right off the bat, a couple things to note. They sell a vehicle specific hub for the 88-91 civic but it's a long hub. Which means if you are planning on using the disconnect as well, you're going to be eating your steering wheel. I picked up the 210s hub adapter which is for the 92-95 civics.

They stated the turn signals might not work, but they do still for me. All of the triggering apparatus appears to be further down the steering shaft. One problem you'll run in to right away though is the gap.

Never mind the gunk and random cat hair, that gap puts the major kibosh on your “clean” install. Fortunately there is a fix for this. Works bell sells long bellows which can then be trimmed to length. The down side, I had to order it from Japan. ¥500 part but another ¥2500 in customs and shipping fees. I asked a couple state side places that sell Works Bell and either they didn't know or they lied to me. The answer I got back was they only sell them as complete kits, Works Bell doesn't sell them separate. Well that's clearly not the case as I have one coming in.

Pics of that when it arrives.

Next item is more of a personal preference. The hub itself comes with two sets of screws. Cone head hex screws or hex bolts. The hex screws would have been great had the quick release adapter had counter sunk and beveled holes for the screws to bolt in to. And I'm just not a fan of the hex bolt.

My solution here was to get some hex cap screws. I beat feet on down to the local Home Depot and they happened to have just what I needed there.

Pretty much exact same length as the original parts, and the screw head fits in the recesses of the locks perfectly. You can see how flush it is.

O.k. Steering wheel has arrived.

It's a Personal Grinta 350mm in polyurethane. I am not a fan of leather products and avoid them as I can. Just a personal preference.

On with the install.

Start with pulling your horn fuse.

Pop the horn button out and you'll find a 19mm nut back in there.

Your implementation may vary but here is the first hiccup I ran in to. The boss is for the eg civics and as such the horn spring contact is in a different spot. See how the spring arm is contacting a plastic disc instead of the contact ring.

I bent it into shape like so.

Now you can see it is clearly contacting the horn ring.

On a side note the turn signal controls are further down the stalk so you don't even have to worry about them. That was quite nice.

Next bit of the install is connecting the steering wheel boss to the quick release hub. The ring is a grounding ring that allows quick release while retaining horn functionality. This is easy, at least with the works bell kit. Smaller wire connects to the hub ring, larger wire connects to the pass through.

Make sure you run the wires through the grounding ring. I made the mistake of connecting one of them prior and it was a tight fit to undo.

A bit difficult to make out here, but you have two alignment dimples. Just make sure they are indeed lined up.

Groovy.

Here is the long boss cover vs the short one. I detailed how to get them earlier in the post. Shame on local dealers for lying.

Unless you want the horrible gap as also mentioned previously, you are going to need the long cover and to trim it down.

Trim it long and then work your way back ring by ring. Since going too short is going to not make you too happy. If you do happen to go short by a ring, you can shove the boss down further, but you will have a bit of aluminum showing from the boss. So your choice there.

Either way much better than this.

Next is assembling the steering wheel. The works bell kit details two horn buttons, one grounds to the horn metal itself, the other is a two wire setup. The personal button as you can see is a two wire setup.

What this means is you need to do a slight modification to the wiring. The ground ring wire is a narrow terminal. So you need to remove it and install a 1/4 female connector.

It's the black wire below.

Once that is done you can plug them into the horn button. Also there is a ground ring in the quick release, that needs removed as well so the horn button fits.

Niceness.

It does move the steering wheel about an inch closer to you, so the turn signals are a little farther to reach, I was able to do so easily though and I'm not a tall guy. If you happen to be or know a machinist I bet you could get the face of the boss turned down a bit and be golden.

A couple videos to follow as I get them edited. Trying to operate the quick release while holding the ipad was not very successful.

Quick comparison of the stock vs 350mm wheel.