Personal Notes

Steering Wheel Restoration

Mark Furneaux - webmaster

A number of places offer steering wheel restoration, trouble is you have to part with the wheel itself and quite a lot of cash. So I decided to have a go myself. I am quite a fan of Frost but their Steering Wheel Restoration Kit was useless (and I am not sure they still sell it.)

I resorted to attacking my Roadster steering wheel myself. The original ivory coloured wheel was badly cracked, especially where the spokes joined.

First stage was to find a suitable spray paint, as close to the original colour as possible. So I took the wheel off, went down to Halfords and searched for colours. A Ford Ivory turned out to be just about perfect. I bought a can and spray tested on the wheel - still a great match.

Next stage was to sand off the rough edges made by the cracks, remove loose material and fill the cracks with fibre-glass filler. I then sanded to get the required finish, masked off the spokes, sprayed with a white undercoat to get a base, and then re-filled any imperfections that were shown up by the paint, and re-sanded.

Final stage was to spray several coats of the Ford Ivory top coat and lightly polish with abrasive paste a week later.

I did this restoration over a year ago and I am pleased to say that the cracks have not re-appeared and the wheel has not proved to be slippery (a concern I had) in use.