Ferrari Carbon/LED Steering Wheels

A long time customer recently asked us to do a LED/carbon wheel for his FF. Shift LEDs are a common customer request, but we’re a carbon company, not an electronics company. So we normally recommend customers purchase a factory wheel if they want LEDs. You can get those wheels from your local Ferrari dealer or have MAcarbon source one for you. We leverage our wholesale connections to get you a better price than most other sources.

LED wheels do have to be installed by a Ferrari dealer as some software setting changes are needed for the car to recognize it. So its always best to check with your dealer if you can bring a wheel to them or if they will insist you have to buy it from them.

There’s only one problem when buying carbon parts made by Ferrari (besides price!). Its that Ferrari's finish is almost always sub-optimal. Ferrari would probably say they are using an “F1 inspired finish” – which is a nice way to say the piece has minimal clear coat and its not very smooth. Since Ferrari is the only source for the LED wheel, we’re stuck! But MAcarbon can improve the finish and we include this work in the cost if we source it for you. We're the only company who offers Ferrari parts who specialize in both carbon and upholstery - just what is needed to get you the best, perfectly tailored wheel.

So for this FF customer we ordered the wheel and it arrived at our shop from Italy. However, with this particular wheel, the center plate was less than ideal. It was imprinted and had a number of pinholes in the finish. Ferrari does the center as a laminate – carbon over the standard metal plate. For some reason, Ferrari’s laminates are even more prone to a poor finish than their molded pieces! If you have an OEM carbon wheel on your car currently, take a look and compare the center plate with the rim. You’ll notice the difference!

MAcarbon can also customize the carbon/LED wheels. We can add 12 o’clock rings, different stitching, extra carbon, different leathers etc. And if your car already has an LED wheel, we can restore and customize yours as well. This wheel was mildly customized. More on that later!

So to summarize: Ferrari is the only source for LED wheels. Their carbon isn't that great. Use MAcarbon to get it and we'll make sure it looks good!

Enough boring text, lets get to some pictures! First we’ll show the before picture as it arrived in our shop.
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Refinishing the center plate first requires removing the said plate. This is delicate work as you have to carefully pull the center out. If you don’t know what you are doing, it’s possible to crack, or worse delaminate the finish on the plate. Its also possible to crack the carbon on the lower 6 o’clock spoke. With the 430/599 style wheels, the technician can also put too much stress on the plastic pods, which can crack their mounting tabs.

To remove the center plate, disconnect the wires from the electronics. Then insert your fingers into the top opening and gently push. At the 6 o'clock spoke, press from behind with your fingers on the back of the plate or pod. Your thumb is on the spoke. Sometimes one of our blue install tools are needed in order to get a little more leverage. But gently push on each corner (3 o'clock, 6 and 9) until the plate comes free.
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Once the center is out, the manettino bean is removed. Next, we remove the turn signal buttons since they are easy to get out. Notice again how poor the carbon finish is.

On a brand new wheel, we want to preserve the original factory manettino sticker if we can. In this case, not only was the wheel brand new, we have not yet reproduced the FF version of the manettino sticker so we had to keep it. Unfortunately, the manettino unit's lock nut is under the sticker so we couldn't dissemble the piece any further. So instead, we carefully mask off the manettino sticker as well as the start button, shock button, wiper stalks and electronic connectors. For a used wheel, if the manettino looks bad, we’ll remove it, dissemble the unit completely and replace the sticker with the one we've made. On a used wheel, which we are restoring, the center plate is often in such a poor state that it will need to be re-sprayed so further disassembly is required.
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On a brand new wheel, we want to preserve the original factory manettino sticker if we can. In this case, not only was the wheel brand new, we have not yet reproduced the FF version of the sticker so we had to keep it. Unfortunately, the manettino units lock nut is under the sticker so we can’t dissemble the center any further. Instead, we carefully mask off the manettino sticker as well as the start button, shock button, wiper stalks and electronic connectors. For a used wheel, if the manettino looks bad, we’ll remove it, dissemble the unit completely and replace the sticker with one we sell at the end. On a used wheel, which we are customizing or restoring, the center plate is often in such a poor state that it will need to be re-sprayed so further dis-assembly is required.

Sorry for all the prose on this section, we didn’t think about doing a Fchat post while working on this wheel (and time was short as we needed to get it shipped to the customer!) so we forgot to take pics of the wheel center in process! But we will have some in-process shots later.

 

With the center out, we first “wet” sand the faceplate. Since the electronics are still on the unit, this is done really with just the sandpaper being moist, not even wet. This work is delicate and has to be done by somebody who is very experienced. The factory finish is so thin, if too much clear is removed, the sandpaper hits the carbon. We call this ‘burn through’ even though that’s more of a car polishing term. If burn-through occurs, the entire panel needs to be sanded down and re-sprayed since exposed carbon looks much different than carbon with a clear coat. Once the piece is wet sanded, we then polish it with a buffing wheel.

This one turned out phenomenal! The photos show the three sections of the center. We took the photos at an angel to catch the reflections of the overhead lights. Reflections, although not ideal when taking photos of CF parts, give you the best judgement of how smooth the surface actually is. So when looking at a carbon part on the web, looks for sharp edges to any reflections. (Then look for another photos that has a clear view of the weave to judge carbon distortion.)

But once we went to install it, something else became very obvious....
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Justthebest - We do matte parts quite frequently. Normally the surface is sanded and then a matte finish is sprayed on. Here are some pics of a Porsche 997 steering wheel we recently did for a customer. These Porsche Sport Design wheels are really hard to take apart. They make the 458 seem like child's play!
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At this point, we had color sanded and polished the wheel center to a perfect shine.
But ....when we went to place the center back in the wheel, the bottom, which had looked good before, now by comparison, didn’t look good after all! That the lower spoke had some light pitting and other imperfections was now obvious.

By now we had decided to do a Fchat thread so we were careful to take pictures this time.

First, out came the wet/dry sandpaper. The clear coat is even thinner on the spoke than in the center. So great care has to be taken not to burn through. The second photo shows the spoke after just a few passes. You can see the pin holes and low spots that still have a glossy look. I've added some arrows to help point them out. The third photo shows the spoke after sanding down to a level surface.
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With the spoke color sanded, the leather was masked off and the spoke polished. With the correct amount of polish, it does't splatter. So more masking is not necessary! At least that is what Lane tells me. Since I'm not good at polishing, I know to stay out of the way and leave it to our experts!

The final photo shows the spoke after polishing. All of the small pitting is gone. The wheel is now ready to isnert the center back in.
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Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you like it.

 

One further aspect to the project was a color change on the stitching. If the project had been a little bigger, we could have added more stitching, done a 12 o'clock ring, done the pods in carbon etc. But this FF was to be a daily driver and our customer just wanted something quick.

The customer's FF has a yellow stitched interior. But a yellow stitched wheel was not in stock and would have to be made by Ferrari. They could not give an ETA if we ordered. It can be anywhere from a few weeks to 3-4 months. You NEVER know with Italy!

Italy did have a wheel with white stitching in stock and was ready to ship. A white stitched wheel in a yellow car wouldn't work. Since the wheel was brand new, we were not going to redo the leather. We could have dyed the stitching but that is not ideal. So we made the decision to just replace the stitching. Luckily, on the 458/FF wheel, the stitching is only on the lower sections. The white thread was removed and the yellow inserted. We changed from the stock 'Sport' stitch style to what we call 'Pointe Croise' ( the French term for 'X' style stitching). We used Pointe Croise in this case because its hand sewn and does not require the leather to come off the wheel.

It came out very nice.
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So with the stitching done and the center assembled and inserted, it was time for pictures and shipping!
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