On a 40-plus year-old truck some parts are bound to wear out or need to be replaced. Whether it is for the improvement of the truck or just for styling, it’s good to know that the automotive aftermarket has us classic truck lovers covered. Such is the case with the Steering column on my ’68 F-100.
While I was busy installing the Fatman IFS a few months back, I realized that I wanted to upgrade the steering. I was tired of the gigantic OEM steering wheel and wanted to install a floor shifter at a later date, so a new column was in order.
After looking at a thousand photos and websites for just the right steering wheel and column combination, I decided that I would take matters into my own hands and turn to a company out of Oregon by the name of Con2r.
I first learned about Con2r and its custom-designed wheel program a few months ago and was more than intrigued to see what could be done with it. One night while chillin’ at home, I hopped onto the Con2r website. In about a half-hour of pouring over the well over 250,000 combinations that Con2r’s online wheel designer made available to me, I had the wheel of my dreams designed using Con2r’s Pomona wheel as a starting point. I was able to choose just about every aspect of the wheel including the offset, front and rear grip, spokes, spoke color, spoke trim, and even the horn button.
Once the wheel was designed to my specs in cyberspace, the crew at Con2r took my digital diagram and turned it into reality. My new custom wheel showed up at the CCT headquarters in less than two-weeks time. It was exactly what I had planned it to be and it was very exciting to actually see exactly what I dreamt up online in my very own hands.
Now that I had the wheel, a suitable column was in order. I wanted simple chrome one with no shifter or key since I was going floor shift and the ignition is on the dash. Our friends at Helix offered up the correct column and a trip to Mooneyes scored the right adapter as well as a bit more chrome by way of an adapter cover. With my pile of parts lying in wait, all that was left it to pull the old wheel and column combo out and install the new ones, which I did. Here’s how it was done. CCT
How Con2r Wheels come to be
