[Healeys] restore original equipment steering wheel

[michaelsalter at gmail.com]

With a LOT of patience and time you can actually restore an original wheel yourself. With advice from Bob Yule, Jean Caron and others I have almost finished the restoration of the original wheel for #174, reproductions of which are not available. 

As recommended I dissolved chips of the rim from a scrap wheel in acetone and used the paste that this produced to build up the missing sections.

The process is very slow and must be done carefully to prevent voids in the applied material. Lots of sanding and filing is required.

I have painted the finished product with 10 thin coats of epoxy and now have to refinish the hub in black crackle paint to complete the project.

I have about 60 hours in the job but what else are you going to do during a Canadian winter!!!!


Michael S

BN1 #174















From: Earl Kagna
Sent: bFridayb, bFebruaryb b7b, b2014 b10b:b36b bAM
To: JOHN BAHE SR, healeys at autox.team.net





John:

Check out these people.  They're in Washington State - he did a Healey wheel 
for me many, many years ago - before decent repos became available.  I 
suspect that a Healey wheel will be too expensive to restore compared to 
simply purchasing a repro - I understand that the current repro's are 
excellent, but if any lister has had recent experience with them, we'd all 
like to know about it.

http://backwardsunlimited.com/Home.html

There are also many aftermarket accessory wheels available from various 
sources - many of us use them.  These wheels were available when the cars 
were sold new, so they're 'sort of legitimate'.  I have a Moto Lita leather 
wrapped wheel on my BJ8 that I installed approx. 25 years ago - and like it 
so much from the driving comfort point of view that I re-installed it last 
year after a full ground-up restoration - ageing hands, you know.  Doesn't 
look all that bad either.

Earl Kagna
Victoria, B.C.
BJ8, BT7 tri-carb


-----Original Message----- 
From: JOHN BAHE SR
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2014 10:01 AM
To: healeys at autox.team.net
Subject: [Healeys] restore original equipment steering wheel

Is there anyone that is restoring BJ8 original steering wheels??  Since
repros are available at a reasonable price this may not be feasible.

Thanks,

John
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