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In case anyone was wondering about 991.2 steering wheels, I had not found any good write ups on how to take one apart and how to swap stuff around. Thanks to Ric at Suncoast and also to dsddcd.
If your steering wheel has heat and multifunction, now comes the tricky bit. It’s not bad, but it is fiddly. You have to both free the bottom of the back cover (it uses a plastic peg) and also free the multifunction box from the back cover. It seems easiest to get a little screw driver in to free the tab that holds the box on.
Once you get past that, everything is super easy. Note, I did this out of order because I had no idea what I was doing. There are four plugs on the multifunction box. One for each side of the switches, one to the heat switch, and another one which I am not sure exactly what it does but I think it is heat or horn maybe, who knows, it does not matter. You have to press on the little tabs and they come right off.
Next, you want to remove the three back pieces in the spokes. They just pull out easily. Then, you need to remove the four T20 torx screws holding the front triangle piece (the big silver or black piece) that covers the front of the wheel. Note that I did this with the back circular cover on because I am an idiot and could not figure out how to get the multifunction box off.
Next, you need to remove the six (two per each front insert) T10 torx screws to remove each of the three front inserts. The bottom one traps the wires so it has to come off while everything is sort of still together. Do that one first. It will be obvious what I am talking about when you see it.
Now you have the skeleton of the wheel. The cool bit about 991.2 wheels is that all of the stuff you removed is modular and fits on any skeleton. The wiring harness is different multifunction heated v. not, but that can be swapped if need be too. The heated multifunction wiring harness works fine in a non-heated multifunction car so I did not need to swap it to accomplish what I was doing.
So, you can put a silver front in place of a black front or screw type inserts in place of plain on any skeleton you want.
Since I wanted a wood wheel, but the GT3 clock spring does not support heated and multifunction, I need to swap the non-multifunction inserts into the wood wheel. Suncoast has the front ones on their website.
Here is where I ran into a small problem. Not only the two upper front inserts are different, but also all three of the rear inserts are different. The lower one has the switch for heating and the top two have cut outs for the MF switches that are in the front. I assembled the wheel with the new two fronts and the rears for the multifunction and honestly it would be fine as you can’t see the gaps sitting in the car (you can see the gap in the one picture above) and who cares if there is a heat switch behind the wheel. However, I wanted the right parts so I pilfered them from my GT3 wheel and sent Ric an email to order them to replace. The ones you want for non-MF are pictured.
EDIT: suncoast now sells the rear inserts. $62 for all three. Ric looked them up and ordered from Germany for me. Thanks Ric!
By the way, disassembly of a non-heated multifunction wheel like the GT3 wheel is super easy as there is no multifunction box and associated wiring to make it harder.
Now you just put everything back in the reverse order you took it off. I hooked up the one set of mystery wires back to the multifunction box, but I am not sure if that matters. Better to do it than not. Then you bolt on your new wheel. Oh and suncoast sent me a new steering wheel bolt for free but it was slightly longer than the one that came off so I just used some more loctite on the old one.
Finally, wait for Rennlist to mock you for having a wood wheel in a GT3. . And dirty floor mats.
Awesome. Good job and write up. This generation of modular wheel is so much nicer to work with than the wheels that came on the 991.1. Tons of user accessible customization options. I dig it!
Now you just put everything back in the reverse order you took it off. I hooked up the one set of mystery wires back to the multifunction box, but I am not sure if that matters. Better to do it than not. Then you bolt on your new wheel (37ft/lbs, disconnect battery and wait before messing with the airbag etc.). Oh and suncoast sent me a new steering wheel bolt for free but it was slightly longer than the one that came off so I just used some more loctite on the old one.
Finally, wait for Rennlist to mock you for having a wood wheel in a GT3. . And dirty floor mats.
Awesome, I did a wheel swap 997.2 to a 997.1 - so I hear you!
Though if you're going to add wood to steering wheel, the interior would look better if you also added it somewhere else, like the shifter, maybe the trim.
M5 Its mahagony. It is the factory option on everything but GT and GTS. Drifting, I may still do the trim and ****, but I sort of like just the wheel with the leather dash trim.