Technical Building my own steering wheel

So you might have seen some of my little personal projects that I have done over the last few years. They were a:

3D Printed Waterfall
&
An Over Thought out Fuel Pump Mount

So I have discovered that I really like taking on these little parts and using new or new to me manufacturing methods to make my idea a reality.

My new project is making my own steering wheel. I really wanted a flat four spoke wheel for my 1932 Ford Roadster BUT I could only find them in 2 sizes. One size was a 17 inch diameter wheel which when I looked at that wheel in roadsters it looked too big in proportion to the rest of the ****pit. I also found a 15 inch wheel that I thought looked too Street Roddie to me.

So I modeled the wheel in Fusion360. Which can be seen in the video below.



A fellow local hot rodder (Steve Rohlman a.k.a. Super Steve to some) had told me if I ever needed something cut on a water jet or laser jet he could help me out. I sent him the file. He asked me lots of questions about how I wanted it done. I told him I trusted him. We ended up cutting this out of stainless steel. Below are a few videos he sent me as it was being water jetted out.







I will probably get the flat metal part from Steve during this year's Southwest Missouri Hot Rod Hundred event. I'll post some photos once I pick up the flat metal wheel.

For making the steering wheel grip my plan is:

• Finalize grip design in Fusion360. My original design as seen above was too small of a diameter to comfortably grip.
  • I am experimenting with a few different grip diameters now.
• Once I get the grip design nailed down I am going to 3D print the grip.
• Then I am going to smooth the grip as best I can.
• The next step will be to pull a mold off this smoothed 3D printed grip.
• The final step would be to resin epoxy cast the metal wheel and steering wheel grip together.

That is probably an over simplified next steps. I will post more as I can.

Thanks

-Q

 

Quick update:

I’ve been playing with the grip diameter over the last few days.


My original model while visually appealing the grip was just too small and I felt like it would hurt my hand after awhile.


I modeled another grip that was considerably bigger but it still felt a bit too small. Also I felt like the finger indentions on the back side were too big.


I bumped up the diameter just a hair on my 3rd try and made the finger indentations on the back side just a hair smaller. After printing that one out I liked where it was heading.

All of these so far have been printed out in a low quality just to save time and filament. I think tomorrow I am going to print out a bigger version of the grip in a high quality version. Once I get the metal steering wheel from Steve I can then start fine tuning the design and move onto the next stage of this process.

 

nice, look forward to progress.

 

VERY cool use of technology!

 

Thanks. Progress will probably slow down a little until I get the metal part of the steering wheel next weekend.

Thanks.

 

Resin casting is going to give you nice finish and if you're going to make several, that would be the way to go. But could you also just print the rim in several pieces in something like ABS and then glue them on?

 

Very cool

 

I had originally thought about just 3D printing the steering wheel grip but I like learning new processes so the resin casting process really appealed to me. And since I posted this on both here and on social media accounts I have had a few guys reach out about doing one for them. If this turns out like I hope I would consider doing wheels for others so being able to do the grip again would come in handy.

Thank you.

 

During this year's Southwest Hot Rod Hundred I picked up the metal part of my steering wheel from Steve. I was able to take some time this afternoon to modify my grip design now that I have the physical metal part of the wheel in hand. I am printing out a low resolution steering wheel grip section now for testing.