Steering Wheel resto
Posted: Tue Mar 15, 05 2:25 pm
Don't know whether any of you guys are interested, but after trying to find a decent original steering wheel for the Runner on ebay and failing miserably, I decided to restore the original.
Now I should have been bright enough to take a "before" picture, but I was obviously not that bright last Saturday morning, so you'll have to make do with an "after" pic only.
Needless to say the steering wheel was mankier than mister manky who had just been awarded a first in mankiness at manky university...cracks, splits and the sun had bleached the original blue to a pond weed green colour.
Basically I cleaned the whole thing up with grey scotchbrite and PK900 panel cleaner, dried it thoroughy and carefully filled the cracks with a premium filler called Evercoat.
Carefully sanding down the filler (I lost some of the graining on the spokes, but I'm more interested in driving the car than winning prizes).
I then applied a copolymer plastic surfacer, then hit it with the specially mixed Plymouth interior colour Thunder Blue (originally I thought it was Baltic Blue, but that's a Dodge colour apparently) and Crystaltop 2 pack clear, which is tough enough to resist the wear and tear of use, while flexible enough not to crack with the movement of the plastic...with a bit of luck.
It's not absolutely perfect, but considering I had completed the job by lunchtime, it turned out well, so don't scrap that cracked plastic wheel, save it!
Now I should have been bright enough to take a "before" picture, but I was obviously not that bright last Saturday morning, so you'll have to make do with an "after" pic only.
Needless to say the steering wheel was mankier than mister manky who had just been awarded a first in mankiness at manky university...cracks, splits and the sun had bleached the original blue to a pond weed green colour.
Basically I cleaned the whole thing up with grey scotchbrite and PK900 panel cleaner, dried it thoroughy and carefully filled the cracks with a premium filler called Evercoat.
Carefully sanding down the filler (I lost some of the graining on the spokes, but I'm more interested in driving the car than winning prizes).
I then applied a copolymer plastic surfacer, then hit it with the specially mixed Plymouth interior colour Thunder Blue (originally I thought it was Baltic Blue, but that's a Dodge colour apparently) and Crystaltop 2 pack clear, which is tough enough to resist the wear and tear of use, while flexible enough not to crack with the movement of the plastic...with a bit of luck.
It's not absolutely perfect, but considering I had completed the job by lunchtime, it turned out well, so don't scrap that cracked plastic wheel, save it!
