1976 Steering wheel overhaul

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Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Threads
33
Messages
823
Location
Perth, Western Australia
Pretty sure this topic has been covered a several times but there are many ways to skin a cat as an environmental activist would quoute the abundance of options presented for skinning a f**n cat. Btw Jerry would have heaps of ideas how to take poor old Tom's fur off ..
Here is this 1976 steering wheel that have seen better days and a few owners before me. It has been guiding the ol'girl at Australia's red dirt to the right direction , Mate.
These owners of the stern did nothing but using and using and using. There are the usual sun-cracks from our beloved UV provider and lack of ozone in the down under continent. Besides general wear and tear and sun and old vinyl a curious guy at some stage must've tried to take out the centre T mark for a relic or a dunno'what but the barbarian used a screwdriver as if he opened a baked bean tin in a hangover morning near the campfire.
Of course..Broke it.
I will put you through a few steps of what is going on with this old steering wheel..

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Step one.
Taken totally apart. Get all the screws and horn connectors cad and zinc plated. Yellow and white respectively.
I have sandblasted the wheel to get a uniform surface. It has taken off the remain of the oem gloss lacker and revealed every crack.
I have then opened up the cracks for the epoxy (Grey Marine Tex) to bite better.

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Next is I got the buttons and the inserts cleaned with baking soda/water paste.
This is what I always use for cleaning plastic parts.
And I have got all the metal bits and screws back from electro plating.

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My intention was to apply the least amount of epoxy as it can be nasty to sand it when the background/base material is softer. The sanding will bite the wheel rather than the epoxy and its easy to damage the healty parts of the piece. This is the first sanding and I will have to revisit the epoxy fillinngs.

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Nice work, lots of tedious work but I'm sure it will turn out great.
 
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