{"id":4994,"date":"2025-01-20T14:36:04","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T22:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/?p=4994"},"modified":"2025-01-20T14:36:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T22:36:04","slug":"wheelman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/2025\/01\/20\/wheelman\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheelman"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of last year, my brother-in-law volunteered to go check out the yard in New York for me, when the guy still had a Travelette parked by his fence. On his way out, he grabbed me a spare steering wheel, which was apparently just laying on a pile of leaves. I picked it up when I was there in the summer (I believe I still owe him $10 for it) and hung it up in the basement.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Not the wheel in question, but in the same shape<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I saw a post on one of the FB groups about a method for fixing the cracks these 60-year-old wheels typically collect, and saved the information for future reference. Sometime in November I bought the epoxy they recommended for the first step, and it’s been sitting on the workbench ever since. It snowed again yesterday and the temperature dropped to 20\u02da, which makes it hard to work outside on anything I really want to accomplish, so yesterday I decided I’d mix the epoxy up and see what kind of results I could get.<\/p>\n

\"\"
After the epoxy was applied<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was hard to work with at first, especially when it’s 10\u02da colder in the basement, but once it warmed up in my hands and I added a little warm water, I was able to get it pliable. When I was satisfied it was mixed, I worked it into all of the major cracks and rebuilt a chipped area around the mount for the horn button. Using water, I smoothed out all the sections I’d added epoxy to and let it sit overnight. I was happy to find it had absolutely no smell at all; \u00a0other epoxies I’ve used have had a terrible chemical stink, but this had none. It was marketed as black in color but mixed out to a dark gray, and I found that it dried almost the exact color of the existing steering wheel.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The final result. Not too shabby!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This afternoon I got my box of sanding supplies out and started working on all of the sections. I added more of the material than I needed, and in hindsight I probably could have laid it even thinner. Starting at about 1:30 I finished fine-sanding it at 3:30, going from 120 grit to 600 and then 000 steel wool. I think it needs one more run with fine-grit paper and then it’ll be ready for primer. Apparently the stuff I need is expensive (go figure) because it’s got to be able to hold up to baking summer heat, so I’ll probably wait and repair the other wheel first to spray them both out at the same time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pricing out the products above, it’s going to be about $75 for all three cans. But I figure the price will be worth it for a wheel that doesn’t cut my hands when I hold it. The big issue will be finding the right color to match the wheel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of last year, my brother-in-law volunteered to go check out the yard in New York for me, when the guy still had a Travelette parked by his fence. On his way out, he grabbed me a spare steering wheel, which was apparently just laying on a pile of leaves. I picked it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-repairs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s58Ac2-wheelman","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4999,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994\/revisions\/4999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}