The clear resin sections of my Sport Fury steering wheel turned yellow with age, cracked and fell off leaving a pristine like new chrome ring. Over the years trying to make it presentable l covered the ring with hose and laced covers. The last effort was a seventeen inch red and black cover for a eighteen wheeler steering wheel. It made the car wheel look even larger and bulkier. Fellow site member Dennis Cloer (skyhawk) suggested covering the chrome ring with clear vinyl tubing thus saving $1K to $1.5K in having it cast with clear resin. The car being a driver and not a points car l decided to give it a go.
The tubing length has to be measured carefully and ends trimmed as necessary to fit. The tubing is then slit with a razor blade or sharp box cutter on the inside curve of the tubing. I did not glue on the ring or the slit because l might want to remove them in the future and it would be extremely messy. Believe me they will not move.
The first layer is 3/8" lD × 1/2" OD.
The 2nd layer is 1/2" ID × 5/8" OD.
The 3rd layer is 5/8" ID × 3/4" OD.
The 4th layer is 3/4" ID × 1" OD
You can buy 10 ft. Lengths at Lowes. See the pitchuhs.
First tubingSecond tubingThird tubingFourth tubingThis is the 18 wheeler cover
Do you think that maybe you could leave off the fourth tube? Here's a pic of the wheel from Art Schlachter's car - the clear portion is thinner than then colored portion...
BTW - the last time I checked, it was $2K to recast a wheel!
When I did the initial clear vinyl tubing mock-up "experiment" on a spare Fury sport wheel, I found that the result looked more proportional to me when 5/8 " ID tubing was used as the final overlay. When correctly installed, the splits overlap with each other and are not immediately noticeable. I was surprised as how well the chrome ring showed through the vinyl tubing.
