Hi
My 67 base steering wheel is in serious need for help.
See photos below.
There doesn’t seem to be replacement wheels available for these (I guess being one year only doesn’t help!)
I’m not sure if WCCC still offers restoration services (shows as out of stock).
I’ve seen a couple of threads here of people doing their own restoration but doesn’t look like it was for a wheel as bad as mine.
Based on the photos do you think it is restorable?
I’ll send photos of it to 2 shops as well : rimblowrestoration and steeringwheelbob
Any feedback on these guys?
In the meantime I don’t feel it’s very safe to drive (the fake wood trim is actually lose and separates partially from the wheel). Does anyone have a spare generic cheap steering wheel for sale? Or should I look at options for a 67 Mustang (should work right?)
My 69 RimBlow Wheel is pretty bad also, I’ve been looking and it doesn’t look like you can get anything decent for less than $700. If money is no object, The Rimblow Restoration guys will apparently make you anything
If you have hand skills and time do the repairs I don’t feel that your steering wheel is beyond repair. I restored my steering wheel in my 67 and I detailed the process on this site. The steering wheel in my 67 wasn’t as bad as yours but the wheel in my 68 convertible conversion was in bad shape.
Here are links to each with pictures:
1968 steering wheel:
When I worked on fiberglass boats, we had clear fiberglass resin that we could color. We just added the color/tint to the clear, mixed in the hardener and brushed on the resin. If that’s still available, that’s the way I would go to try to restore your present wheel. Use a little modeling clay for a mold and fill the gaps with the white resin.
You might be able to make it better, but there would be some serious challenges. One of the ‘big ones’ is that the fingergrip bumps on the back side of that wheel are evenly spaced. Where it’s been pulled apart by cracks, there’s no way to space it correctly any more, even if you fill them in. If you dremel out some of the damaged spots to clean it up and give the surface more tooth for repairs to hang onto, you could use epoxy putty and then sand/grind everything smooth when it’s all dry. JB Weld makes some good products for this.
With enough patience and some bodywork skills, this wheel could be improved, but it will always look and feel a bit odd due to the spacing distortions created by the damage. Your cracks don’t look too wide, so maybe it wouldn’t be bad after all?
Thanks everyone for the inputs. I think i have my plan laid out :
Wrap my current steering wheel with something like sport grip just to hold the bit of the rim that’s coming off until my car gets to a properly drivable stage (many projects still going)
Get a mustang deluxe replacement wheel once the car is drivable
when i really have nothing else to do, try to do a restore of my current wheel
@steven : i had seen your 67 wheel resto thread, thanks for the link for the 68.
Here is the result of the first step ! I didn’t do a really good job I think I may have ordered a size too small but that will do !
At least I don’t have bits of the steering wheel hanging.
