Rebuilding Steering Wheel

[Ashley James]

Myrtle peel the cracked plastic off the spokes but leave the rim and
mask it, then they have the spokes polished and chromed. Finally they
mould resin back over the spokes and up to the rim and then Polyester
lacquer and polish it. The problem is that the original material was
celluloid, which is more flexible and less crack prone. However,
although there was/is a Brit company that re-celluloids I couldn't
find them and wouldn't have used them because they'd done the wheel on
one of my MKVIs and I'd seen others that were peeling and had faded to
grey and gone splotchy.

Alpine Eagle and many of the serious restorers simply fill the cracks,
two pack paint and polish wheels with great success, or if they are
bad enough they send them off to a company in Liverpool who re-cast
the rim in aluminium and paint it. Therefore any later Bristol wheels
are probably best done with two-pack after filling, but I don't think
Myrtle make the original Bluemels type, instead I think they offer, as
many do, the type of wheel used on racing Jaguars and Aston Martins of
the time.

There are Bluemels restorers but not for our type of wheel, only MG
ones.

I hope this helps.

Ashley