[mt94ss]

I have a few of these plastic Riviera wheels and thought I might put one in my '55.

This is how I fixed my aged and cracked steering wheel. This is the first time I’ve attempted to restore one. Having seen several wheels restored on the HAMB, I was thinking that this would be totally different because it’s plastic, not acrylic (or whatever older wheels were made of) and wasn’t sure what I would use to fix it.

The epoxy like JB seemed too hard and might have issues bonding to the soft plastic. Then I remembered fixing the rear bumper on my ’95 Roadmaster Wagon with a plastic ‘bondo’ that was flexible and bonded very well. So I am doing the same fix here.

The first thing to do was to de-grease the wheel. I used quick-prep but denatured alcohol should work just as well.

You can see that the wheel had come apart at the center pretty bad. I sanded under the part that is lifted to get all the rust and scale off, then quick cleaned it. I put a bunch of the filler into the gap and clamped it down to hold it tight until the filler hardened.






Each end of the center bar looked like this.

 

[mt94ss]

All three of the pin holes on the rim cracked as well.



This is the filler that I used.



I forgot to get shots of sanding and opening the cracks. Basically I used 120 grit sandpaper to rough up the finish. The cracks were opened up with sandpaper, an air grinder, and a razor blade. After the first sanding I blew the dust off and cleaned it again with the quick clean.
Here’s the end of one of the arms after the first pass of filler.


The lower portion.

 

[mt94ss]

The upper portion.



After second fill and sand with 180 grit.





Then I used plastic primer / adhesion promoter.

 

[mt94ss]

To get to here so far.



I’ll get some more sandable primer and shoot it with a couple three coats and see what it looks like.
More photos when the next steps are done.

 

[hotrod fozzie]

Where did you buy your filler at and what is it called? I need some for a project