Steering Wheel

The Pinz is a well designed truck with a lot of features but in some areas the year of design is clearly visible. The steering wheel is one of these things. It’s a standard wheel used in many small trucks at that time. Unfortunately steering wheels had a far to small ring which is tricky for offroad use. Mike Nims, president of SWPA, came up with a brilliant and reasonable cost solution: use an old Pinz steering wheel, cut everything away which isn’t part of the hub, weld a plate to the hub and install a modern steering wheel.

As this is well beyond my homeworker skills I purchased a pretty used Pinz wheel and a Schroeder wheel. Mike was kind enough to bring it to the same company which made his and after a few weeks in AZ it came back to ugly NJ to be installed.

Sure, we could have used the original wheel to avoid the cost for a second Pinz wheel but we just wanted to have the original one handy just in case (of what???)......

The donar Pinz wheel (left, pretty worn but only he center portion is used) and the new wheel (right) with adapter:

Center painted and wheel mounted with stainless M6 bolts and locknuts: