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Thread: VDM steering wheel conversion to wood rim

  1. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by mfitton View Post
    914 wheels are 380mm not 360mm. Also maybe I am missing something here, so wood rim that is 400mm you are going to transfer to a 914 380mm. Oh, I did graduate 6th grade!
    Mike I think you are correct that the 914 wheels are 380mm. My early wood 400mm is stashed away, and I wouldn't mess with it. My interest is converting an ebonite 380mm 914 wheel to a wood rim. I spoke with a woodworker friend yesterday and showed him the 380mm wheel and he didn't think it would be too difficult to "sandwich" the steel rim circumference with wood. I need to remove the ebonite and determine exactly what we have to work with. One of my concerns is the spoke transition to the rim...a 90 degree transition would be easier to deal with than a flare (like on my 400mm), but he wasn't concerned.
    It would be interesting to see if anyone has pics of a naked wheel skeleton, so I can figure out what tools are best used to remove the ebonite. I would rather not use a grinder for fear of damaging the steel underneath. Does ebonite succumb to heat and soften?
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  2. #12
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    Ok, so you are looking for someone to replace the ebonite rim with wood from scratch to be 380mm, gotcha.
    Mike Fitton # 2071
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  3. #13
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    Here is a slightly smaller version of the wood wheel: https://www.flashpowerparts.com/pors...ng-wheels.html
    Mike Fitton # 2071
    2018 911S Carrera White
    2012 991 Platinum Silver ( Gone)
    1971 911T Targa Bahia Red (Gone to France)
    1995 911 Carrera Polar Silver (Gone)

    No Affiliation with City of Chicago!

  4. #14
    bruce crawford does beautiful work, and we have plenty of donor 914 wheels here that is for sure!!!

  5. #15
    Righteous Indignation 70SATMan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by speedo View Post
    It would be interesting to see if anyone has pics of a naked wheel skeleton, so I can figure out what tools are best used to remove the ebonite. I would rather not use a grinder for fear of damaging the steel underneath. Does ebonite succumb to heat and soften?
    Here's a 400MM leather wrapped wheel. Imagine the 380MM to be the same. I also imagine the ebonite wheel frame to be the same.
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    Michael
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  6. #16
    Oil Cooled Heart Bullethead's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by speedo View Post
    Mr. Crawford's work looks amazing, however I will attempt the transformation.
    Cool! Please share a how-to... maybe write a short for the Esses?

    Seeing that the rim is round stock, seems like the most difficult thing would be setting up a router jig for that. And laminating the blanks.

    Good luck, looking forward to some inspiration!
    Russ

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  7. #17
    Senior Member raspritz's Avatar
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    When Bruce Crawford restored my prototype wheel, he said he wondered at first whether it might be a regular wheel somebody had redone in wood. But once he actually saw it he said it was obviously original. My point is that he surely could do it.
    Rich Spritz

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  8. #18

    Interesting twist...

    I took a look at the Classico Wheel website and saw that they make a nice looking reproduction of the 400mm wood VDM wheel. I sent the owner (Jeffrey) and email inquiring about doing a wood 380mm on the dished 914 wheel. He quickly responded with his phone number and we had a good chat. Nice guy, who told me an interesting story about how he bought a hundred (or so) VDM wheels off someone on the board in hopes of re-wooding them. Explained that they were a mixture of 380 and 400mm wheels...both rubber and plastic. Said he spent an inordinate amount of time stripping them of the rubber and plastic, and then sending them off to Europe where someone was going to restore them with wood rims. As it turned out, he said the the wheel rims were steel, but so inconsistent and out of round that there was no way that he could have the shop do a "production run" as the circumferences were so "off". He said it was not worth it for the shop to have to do each wheel custom...so he gave up on the project. He went on to explain that they way to do it was to do each wheel independently. In other words, use each rim as a special template to create a "guide" to help the router for both wheel halves.
    So I am going to go ahead a strip the ebonite off the rim and see what I end up with. In a perfect world it will be exactly round. In a less than perfect world, it will be out of round but massage-able. In a very less than perfect world I'll remove the crooked rim,and weld up a new one. Thanks for eveyone's contribution!
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  9. #19
    Senior Member bob joyce's Avatar
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    if this helps..... i took a 356B wheel (i saved the original, as seen in picture) and removed the rubber outer material. Inside it was a "wire" loop not very big in comparison to what 70SATMan appears to be. might be camera angle etc.... i made the jig you see in picture. I placed 2x4's on the floor and thick plastic sheet to make a troth that i poured hot water in and soaked the veneers in, and layed up the veneers that i had, staggering the end position as i progressed. gluing with gorilla glue.... used a half million small clamps to keep the veneer against the buck... After this dried i placed a 10" circular saw on it's side on a flat table and "cut the begel" in half..... After that i traced were the wire would fit in the wood begel half... with a router i hoged out the depth needed to put the two halve together with the wheel indside... once it was glued together and dry, i had a big thick square wheel... i cant remember what i used for the initial cutting down to size, but i know i fell in love with a 10" or so wood rasp... it was used to do all of the actual shaping and finger insets, etc. It was a lot of fun, i put it on the car and drove it and would adjust its shape until i was happy.... the only thing i worried about was shaping into the "wire" because i actually reduced the outer diameter from stock, but did not change the "wire"Name:  DSCN0696.jpg
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    Last edited by bob joyce; 07-08-2020 at 04:08 PM. Reason: picture

  10. #20

    Down the rabbit hole

    A friend that has made a name in the cycling world as one of the premier manufacturers of wooden bikes (and also a Pcar guy) was up to visit over the weekend. I shared my ideas on the steering wheel and he had some interesting thoughts. He uses a cnc when building his frames, and suggested that might be an approach to take. He also convinced me the proper way to build up material for the rim was to laminate layers. Instead of forming layers around the inside of a buck, his approach would be to laminate layers around the outside of a buck/hub. We took some measurements off of my wheel and determined that the wheel is close, but not round. And there was no evidence of damage that might have affected the round-ness, so It probably came from VDM that way. We were both curios what was inside the plastic so we started at it with a mallet and wood chisel...slow work. We decided to fire up the air compressor and have at it with an air chisel. Bingo, three minutes later she was bare.
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