[Healeys] Steering wheel restoration

[Michael Salter]

"I would not recommend restoring the original plastic steering wheels when
excellent reproductions are available."
I would have to concur with John on that. However, if you are looking to
restore a very early 100 wheel, either adjustable or non adjustable  17"
diameter or a 16 1/2" non adjustable wheel they are unavailable in
reproductions so extreme measures are called for!!!
The last wheel that I restored using the acetone method, suggested to me by
Bob Yule BTW, was on #174 andthe result was good enough to score concours
gold at Gettysburg and shows no signs of cracking  3 years after I finished
restoring it.
I believe that the real problem is that the plastic used to make these
wheels originally tends to shrink over time and eventually cracks appear to
relieve the resulting tensile stress.
In my experience any filler material, other than the original, fails to
bond strongly and as a result cracks appear at the material boundaries very
quickly.

Just sayin'

Michael S

On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 5:03 PM, John Spaur <jmsdarch at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> I would not recommend restoring the original plastic steering wheels when
> excellent reproductions are available.
>
> The reason the plastic has cracked is because water has penetrated the
> wheel
> and it has started to oxidize the metal reinforcement which has expanded
> and
> cracked the wheel. That process may of slowed down, but it will never stop.
>
> I stored an original wheel in my garage for several years intending to
> restore it. It appeared to be in the same reasonable shape when I went to
> inspect it in preparation for restoration. When I pull at parts of it that
> looked to be in good shape, it  just crumbled in my hands.
>
> John Spaur
> '62 BT7
>
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-- 
*If you can't fix it with a hammer, you've got an electrical problem.*
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