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MG TD TF 1500 - Steering wheel project update

Here is the wheel after French polishing. The image on the right was the first coat; the image on the left is after many. I am not quite done; this is about 30 coats so far. It may sound like a lot but it's not too hard; about three minutes of polish morning and night and it builds slowly.

A question: has anybody made a central wooden hub piece for their MG steering wheel? To replace the ivory-colored plastic (painted bronze) original? Just curious if anyone has tried it and whether there are any photos of them doing so! (This was suggested by another reader in an earlier thread). I could imagine that a nice piece of turned wood would look pretty good there!


Geoff Baker

Beautiful
Mort Resnicoff 50 TD (Mobius)

Great job Geoff. I remember seeing a pic somewhere of a wooden center piece but, I can't think where. I'll do some looking on the web. It's there somewhere.

Kirk
Kirk Trigg

Very nice wheel Geoff.
Lot of hard work there. Should look really good on your MG.
Rod
R. D. Jones

Looks fantastic! And do try the wooden centerpiece, your other inlays are great.

Maybe useful for someone's next project - here's an idea I used when I refurbished my old moto lita that was shabbily hand varnished:

After removing the old varnish and sanding, I built a rig from a barbeQ rotor that held the wheel and a low container where the paint just covered the lowest part of the rim. The original plan was to rotate the wheel through the paint and thus get a homogeneous layer with no drips and grooves. Turned out the paint was much too thick and the motor still too fast, so I worked in steps. Turn a few degrees, let the paint run off, turn again ... for about 2 complete rotations. Then lift wheel out of the container, drip off and rotate until dry. Gave me a very smooth and uniform cover with no further processing needed.

Next time I would slow the motor down a lot more and make the paint a lot thinner (probably close to water viscosity) and try continous rotation. That should add more and thinner layers that make the varnish even more durable.

Ok, one reason certainly was that I'm a klutz with a paintbrush and another that I was lazy- I could never bring up the patience of going through so many process steps. But designing and building the rig and setup was still fun, though probably just as much work...

Mike




Mike Fritsch

It took me a while but, I think this is the center cap I was thinking of. It is on a site identified as follows: http://www.classiccarsltd.com/modules/auto/detail.php?id=805

I'll see if I can manage to post a picture.

Kirk


Kirk Trigg

I made a centre hub out of nylon and after spraying with metailic sand paint it is indistinguishable from an original. The only tricky bit is turning the the curve on the domed section. I did this roughly by manipulating the saddle and top slide simultaneously and then finished the job with abrasive paper. Recently I have repaired an original, bakelite, hub with Devcon epoxy putty and again after spraying it is perfect. I also used this material to repair the steering wheel rim in both my brother's TF and mine. I cleaned out all the cracks, back to the metal frame with a Dremel, filled them and smoothed everything with waterproof abrasivive paper. This was an easy job and the only way you cn tell there has been a repair is the absence of the casting "flash" ridge which I had to sand off. BUT - has anyone found a method of replicating the mottled effect on the rim.


Happy Christmas to all


Jan T
J Targosz

This thread was discussed between 12/12/2013 and 14/12/2013

MG TD TF 1500 index

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