clio 197/200 OEM steering wheel spacer

peter

POTM Winner - February 2017
hi,

ever since i bought a (secondhand) clio 200 a couple of months back, i found the driving position wasn't to my liking (i'm 1m88, that's 6'2" for you guys). i really needed the steering wheel to be a bit closer. i contemplated an aftermarket jobbie (deep dish momo or sparco), but didn't want to lose the cruise control buttons on the steering wheel (and the missus wasn't too keen on me getting rid of the airbag either). so a search for an oem steering wheel spacer started. well, google is your friend (sometimes) and i found a thread on here of someone looking for exactly the same thing ...http://www.clio197.net/forum/showth...-wheel-spacer&highlight=steering+wheel+spacer .

so, i got myself a spacer from Giacomo_rs and yesterday me and my brother spent the afternoon getting it installed. i looked up a couple of threads on how to remove the steering wheel and more importantly, the airbag. quickly found out it wouldn't be an easy job and also, i hardly found any photos on the subject in here or on any of the other english renault forums. but then i found a thread (dating from 2009) on a french site with lots of photos, where a guy replaces his worn steering wheel with one from a clio 3 RS WSR ("world series by renault", not sure if you had them in the UK). http://www.forum-auto.com/les-clubs/renault-clio/sujet390002.htm# .

very informative thread it is, but the problem was we couldn't figure out where to stick the flathead screwdriver in. we first thought we had to put it in the big hole behind the steering wheel, but we just couldn't get to the retaining clip. then my brother noticed this small notch/groove/trench (sorry, can't find the right english word for it) on the back of the wheel and he suggested to punch the screwdriver through it, because he thought doing that would get us to the clip. first i thought his suggestion was daft, but when i couldn't see how we would ever get to the clip otherwise i gave him the go-ahead. well, turned out he was right and we got to the clip right away. we made a little slot (?) in the flathead of the srewdriver, to get it to grip better on the clip, and we could fairly easily push the clip down (steering wheel is turned upside down). mind you, that didn't mean we had the airbag out just yet. while my brother pushed the clip down, i tried pulling the airbag away from the wheel. it didn't come off at first, so getting fed up with it by now, i pulled as hard as i could and finally it came off! took us about two hours to get this far!

the rest was fairly easy. steering wheel came off nice (use a torx bit size 50, not 45 as i found in a couple of threads in here) and my brother got on extending all the cables (cruise control and airbag) by about 10 cm (4"). before putting the airbag back in we made sure all the cables were put aside, so as they wouldn't get squashed by the airbag. held the airbag in front of the wheel and pushed it back in by pushing with equal force on top and buttom. reconnected the battery and then had a test drive (steering wheel didn't come off in my hands, cruise control worked, horn worked, airbag ... didn't explode in my face). job done.
driving position is much improved. glad i bought the spacer. pretty chuffed we pulled it off. big thank you to giacomo for making the thing. :clap: great piece of kit. highly recommendable.

i was stupid enough to forget my camera to take a few pics, so i'll post a couple with the spacer installed and of the screwdriver we used (just in case someone else is interested in the spacer). notice that we didn't fit the rubber cover giacomo included in the sale. we just couldn't make it fit right. i don't really mind for now, maybe we'll try again or come up with a different solution in a couple of months.

also, a big thank you to all of you guys in here. seriously, this place is packed with useful info. i don't think i would have tried this, if it wasn't for the info i found in here.

cheers
peter


the tool ...

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close up of the tool ...

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where to stick the tool (without the tool) ...

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where to stick the tool (with tool in place) ...

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giacomo's spacer installed ...

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giacomo's spacer close up ...

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