Steering wheel removal?

Hey all! My steering wheel in my 96 xj country ed. is shot & I'd like to put an after market wheel on! My ? is with the air bag wheel how do I disasemble & can I use an aftermarket wheel? Thanks for any input!

1. Disconnect the battery
2. On the back side of the wheel you will see 2 holes with screws in the bottom. Remove the screws.
3. carefully remove the air bag, taking care not to break the connector / wire on the back side of it.
4. Remove the center bolt
5. Remove steering wheel from splined shaft. Take care when mounting the new one to put it on in the same position as the old one. Or just take it to an alignment shop, if you need one anyway...

Note: Do this with the front wheels on the ground to eliminate problems with the clock spring (in case you want to go back to your air bag)

the 96 uses the same airbag setup as the 95, it is triggered by tension on a screw that goes in from the bottom.

BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL
Do NOT have your face in front of the airbag (or any part of your body really) when you are taking apart the steering column, in case it goes off.

Two things about an aftermarket wheel on this steering column that I learned by doing mine:

1.) the turn signal no longer cancels after making a turn.
2.) since the column is relatively square, the new wheel is not going to line up with it at all.

Neither of those bother me too much, but be aware of it. You will also need a steering wheel puller to get the wheel off, it's not as simple as just removing the nut and pulling it off the steering shaft.

you can kind of see what I mean about it not lining up here:



or here if you look close

Mike i think somebody stole all your wires. I also think they cleaned it so you can't get any prints. Good luck.

haha the second pic was mid way through swapping everything into the new body when i broke the old one on half.

Awesome, thanks guys!!!