Newbie - Steering Wheel Junkie

Hello Erich. The Tiger wheel was made from segments of mahogany. The inlay was real ebony wood; most likely gaboon. The Tiger wheels' inlay was not a single continuous piece of wood as you might expect (Nardi actually used two thin strips of dark wood before changing to plastic), but relatively short lengths butt jointed every several inches. They were also very thin, sometimes two, sometimes three wide to make the stripe. This was a result of their wood choice. Ebony of all types is dense and brittle, but the gaboon is more so than others, making it very difficult to bend without breaking. You will find it very difficult to see what I just described without scraping off the finish. The below image of a broken rim will show you some of what I'm describing.

Question for you... Have you ever seen a Tiger wheel that didn't have a crack around the top of the bakelite boss?

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Hello Dave. There were three main methods for building rims; ply laminate (plywood) as used by Derrington, segmented (many early Ferrari wheels), and barrel wound (also called wrapped). The wrapped process is a laminate where seven or eight thin strips of wood are bent around a forn to creat what appears to be a perfect circle of wood. Later Nardi wheels, especially the signature series, with black stripes were done in this method (well, they did cheat a little). This method superseded the segmented style. That same MGA wheel below with a wrapped - barrel wound beech rim.

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Mark: Thanks very much for that picture, is very helpful. Although, since mirrors reverse images, isn't that really a OMOM wheel? ;-)

Actually, very interesting. I've been trying to piece this all together for some time. I have to wonder if Momo sourced those wheels from Walsall. Walsall was very happy being a provider of wheels for others' names; ie Les Leston. I will see if I can see enough of the wheel in that picture to compare to the Walsall version. The faux guillochet on the spokes will provide some detail for comparison. Back when all this was being done, they never thought it was important enough to document, so information disappeared with the companies and people involved. They never anticipated there would be a steering wheel geek like me.

I'm away right now on day one of a week long vacation, so I'll get back to it upn my return. Women are funny creatures, but you folks probably know that. Weleft a great house in a great area to drive nine hours to stay in a one bedroom condo next to a highway in Weston, Fla. Call it a vacation and she'll love it, call it home and watch her expression change.

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Yes, it's very likely they did when they discovered the plastic crap others were using. The ones I've restored were all wood inlays, although I'm not surprised to learn they changed to plastic. Nardi started out with wood and changed to plastic too.

I will be interested to know more about the gent who makes the centers; please send me email if you will.

BTW, wasn't a good idea to use paint remover anyway.

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Hello Jacques. I'm afraid my expertise ends with the classic period wheels. However, I would imagine the finish on your wheel was a varnish or urethane. I'm sure you can lightly sand the affected area and coat with urethane with no reaction to the original finish. I guess this is okay if the area isn't easily seen. If I'm not mistaken, the Nardi you speak of is the newer line of fat rim wheels. Keep in mind that they can be had relitively cheap as new. Probably wouldn't pay to have it refinished professionally.

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Hello 1oldf. Your wheel is definitely a rarity. I see they did the blind riveting to the boss before making those three cut-outs. I'm not familiar enough with the Corvette to know what those cut-outs were for. I'll check my files when I get back from vacation. Probably the best way of finding an original horn piece would be ebay. That was a great experience you had; I'll probably come up with a few questions for you if you don't mind.

Off to South Beach now to try to catch some sights.

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Yes, it does appear that Momo supplied some wood wheels. The pictures provided earlier were very helpful and Mark was good enough to send me the full size images. The Momo in the pictures is what I believed to be a Walsall. I will be making some comparisons to pictures I have of two Walsall wheels that I used to have. I curious if the Momos were made by Walsall, making us all correct.

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Thanks, Warren, pictures would be good. In addition to the rim, a crisp image of any spoke will help me make some comparisons in tooling. As for the yellow area between spokes - if I understand correctly where you're talking about, it's just the yellowing of the finish over the aluminum internal rim, which was left exposed. This is what I call a 3/4 wrap, where the wood wraps around the outside edge, but not the inside. The other two rim approaches are sandwich, which has both inner and outer edge exposed (and has rivets or dowels); and full wrap, which has the wood wrapped all around the internal rim.

My direct email is [email protected]

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Can anyone tell me if there is commonality between steering shaft splining on Ferrari, Maserati, and Fiat?

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Sorry, I do not know much about leather rimmed wheels.

 

Hello Randy. Thanks for the kind words. I had seen the name but thought - nah, can't be the same guy. Do you have a Ferrari too? I think I just saw something about you having a Cobra? Is that a new addition?

Good that you mentioned the sentimental attachment to that Moto-Lita or I definitely would have suggested replacing it. Are you also attached to that plywood rim? Although the colors have been pretty much muddled by time and exposure, the real Derringtons had a nice laminate rim of contrasting colors made from obeechi and mahogany. You just can't find plywood like that today. I make my own laminates:
http://www.pbase.com/mdlempert/image/109865405

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