I don't want to get anyone mad at me but has anyone ever removed the paddle shifters off of the steering wheel?

I do 99% of my driving in the city and I'm not an aggressive driver so the normal autotran does me fine for most of my driving. But the one thing I feel uncomfortable with is I can't find a comfortable position for my hands. I would really like to rest my fingers over the cross bar on the steering wheel but with the paddle shifters there is only room for 1 finger at the most.

So if there is an easy way to remove them I would like to do so at least to see if I like it or not.

 

I'm not aware of anyone who has done this... each paddle is a single "unit" containing both the paddle and the switches, etc. While it's technically pretty straightforward to pull the wheel, unplug and remove the paddle assemblies, I don't know what the car would do without these plugged in - I'd be surprised if it doesn't throw codes at a minimum, and might have other consequences... but no way to know until someone tries it...

Here's the 1st gen diagrams...

Here's the 2nd gen diagrams...

 

I removed them...but only to paint them black and put them back on.



Assuming it is similar to the R53, you need to remove the airbag. There is a screw holding in each paddle shifter.

There is going to be a weird indention in the back of the steering wheel after though.

 

Did you run the car without them while you had them off for painting?

And, yep, the wheel is cutout for the paddles... though you COULD replace with a "manual" wheel... IF removal of the paddles don't cause any other problems...