As the title says I replaced the steering wheel badge in Ms. Denmark's SB today and it is pretty easy to do.
First thing I did was see if it would just glue on to the existing one and that is a no go. Badges are the same size.
So then I said to self there is an airbag in there and I don't feel like losing teeth if it goes off so I disconnected the battery and went to have a beer. I'm not sure if there are capacitors or anything like that so I figured I'd let any power bleed down before I started poking around. Keeps the horn quite too while you putter.
I found the badge easy to remove and one of the most important aspects of this task is to make sure you do it when the interior of the car is very warm. I wouldn't do this mod in cold weather as the vinyl will not be pliable.
First I used a thin screwdriver to carefully pry up the badge. Once it's up about and 1/8 of and inch I used an old putty knife that had rounded edges as to not rip into the vinyl of the wheel. Since the vinyl was very warm and pliable it lifted easily. There are thin aluminum tabs that fold under the vinyl of the wheel to hold it on and they straighten with a minimum amount of effort. Once 3-4 of the tabs were straight and out of their locating holes the rest of the badge just fell out.
Pretty easy so far .... unfortunately Ford decided to make the OEM badge kind of hollow on the back and it fits over a raised asteric looking thing made of the steering wheels vinyl. I was able to carefully and slowly whittle away at this asteric looking thing with a utility knife but if you have a Dremel or some other type of device you may be able to do this part more quickly. Just take your time as the vinyl is not very thick. The fact that the inside of the car was very warm made cutting the vinyl a piece of cake, just time consuming.
Once I was satisfied with my cutting job and the surface was relatively flat all that needs to be done is a quick cleaning with some alcohol wipes to remove any grease and loose particles.
Line up the new badge with the steering wheel using the lettering on the top of the badge not the Mercury man. Ours says Marauder across the top and 154 of 997 across the bottom but yours may say something different as Danial from Colex can make them semi-custom for you. Danial was very amenable to what Ms. D wanted and the final product is a piece of artwork.
I then connected the battery back up and didn't hear any explosions so not sitting in the car I reached in from behind the steering wheel started the car up. No explosion so all seemed good to go.
Badge looks like what the car should have had from the start from Mercury instead of the waterfall.
I would like to post pics but the camera and computer are having a tiff with each other and will not communicate. I will however post some pics when I get my computer buddy over here to work out the problem. That'll cost me a six pack but he usually asks me to help him drink it so it's all good.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the hardest this is like a 3. Just make sure you do it on a warm day and the inside of the car has had a few hours to bake in the Sun to warm up the vinyl to make it pliable. Take your time and you will get positive results too.
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Originally Posted by ctrlraven
