How to go about repairing broken/cracked plastic steering?

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1966DartConvertible

1966DartConvertible

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As the title says really...

Im planning to restore the car and this steering wheel just will not do.

P1000994.jpg


As you can see the area where the left spoke meets the center is broken and the right spoke is cracked. The center emblem and horn ring i can buy off Ebay I think.

Secondly, if you look at the picture above, along the perimeter of the dash where it looks kinda Gold is supposed to be CHROME! How do you chrome a plastic trim? The closes thing i could think of is to paint silver (which is not the same).

What's your advice?

Syed
 
You need to strip the wheel down first,take off anything you dont want epoxy or filler on.Give it a super good cleaning with thinner or some kind of chemical cleaner that wont melt the plastic.Get some epoxy that comes in a syringe for easy dispensing.Rough up the repair area's with 36 or 40 grit . Clamp the pieces in place and open the cracks up enough to get a good amount of epoxy in and fill in the cracks with epoxy. Make sure to drill the ends of any cracks out with a small bit,this will prevent the crack from spreading. Use a high strength filler for the first application,something like kitty hair (fibreglass strand filler). Then finish with glaze,primer and paint.Done right it will look like new!

Or find another wheel..
 
I've tryed the chrome sprays. Waste of time and money. Send the bezel off for restoration.
Try vea-restorations.com
 
RedFish said:
I've tryed the chrome sprays. Waste of time and money. Send the bezel off for restoration.
Try vea-restorations.com
Click to expand...

If I were within 1000 miles from the US of A i would... but to send a 6 foot-wide dash across the atlantic for "chroming" would be $$$ :)
 
It will work out fine.Mettalics should be laid down with a medium wet coat so the metal particles settle correctly and lay flat for maximum brilliance. A dry coat will have the particles on edge and be darker in tone. I would buy several spraybombs and practice till it looks right. Another option is that stick on shiny stuff that the rice crowd seems to like. Around here it's used as cheap dress up on tons of 4x4's.

And I believe a more workable version may be found in the model hobby-ist's world
 
For repairing the broken steering wheel, google POR, they are the guys with the "hammer tough" finish. Used a lot on k-frames etc. I have a catalog of theirs and was flipping thru it. They have a complete kit for repairing steering wheels. Here is a link to their website.

http://www.porcan.com/usa/index.htm

4spdragtop
 
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