Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

My 115 steering wheel is in good shape as far as no cracks, but if it is humid out my steering wheel starts having a rub off of the steering wheel rubber material. The finish of the rest of the wheel inside forks and horn has a light shiny coating but where your hands go this is all dull and will rub off slightly on high humidity day driving.

Can I put a top layer of a polyurethane type product on the steering wheel to prevent this. Any suggestions would be helpful. I don't want it to be sticky. The steering wheel appears all original.

Thanks

James

There was some work done on a 55 wheel which I believe is also hard rubber or at least the methods would be the same for hard rubber. Reading thru the process used on that one might give you some ideas you could try on yours.

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One thing I would wonder about is since the old finish is sticky or coming off just in certain areas is the bond to the old rubber so far gone or has the rubber started deteriorating that you would not be able to clean it thoroughly enough to avoid it still coming off after the work was done.

Also would need to make sure nothing modern used in the cleaning would damage or soften the hard rubber.

I would call a firm (or 2) that restores SW's and ask them what they can do to cure the problem.

Also, there are paints that are formulated for plastics, which I'm assuming would be a little flexible, that might work out OK.

The Caddy 12 and 16's would do that. Rather than permanently change the original wheel they would buy a pair of driving gloves.

My 1934 wheel (hard rubber) does that occasionally on very humid days, maybe 3-4 times a year. I simply wipe it off with a dry towel, takes a bit of rubbing but the wheel doesn't seem to have suffered or changed any in all these years.

I received a quote from Quality restorations of 1900.00.

They use urethane, they strip the plastic off the wheel frame, bead blast the frame and paint it the same color of the original plastic. Then they cast on a specially formulated thermoset UV stable urethane plastic in the original configuration with out loss of the original detail. The urethane will not shrink, crack, turn yellow or change colors. The wheel is placed in the appropriate mold. The clear urethane is then tinted to the original color and added to the mold. After it is cured the plastic is heat treated, sanded and polished. The color is uniform through out the plastic, it is not a painted wheel, the wheel is one complete casting no joints....8-10 weeks turn around.

This is verbage from the quote...seems well done, not just covering problems or cracks. Seems expensive but there is a bunch of time and labor im sure.

Quality seems quite proud of their wheels, WAY out of my budget. I have a wheel at a competitor, stay tuned :)

SWEET!!!!! thats what i love about this site tons of info i would love to find something out a lot cheaper with quality workmanship.

There is a thread on a 47 wheel in the parts and interchange section of the PAC forum where the poster is not at all happy with one company. Granted the 115 hard rubber wheel and the 47 plastic wheel are of different construction. The plastic wheel takes a special process compared to the rubber so it sounds like there might have been a huge miscommunication as to what was expected and what was delivered.

We've taken a detour from the original posters question, but for anyone searching based on the topic of steering wheel restoration, I strongly urge anyone looking at "Backwards Unlimited" to turn away. Low price is consistent with low quality.