new xke steering wheel for $1.00
 

My steering wheel on my E-Type was all rotted away being stored in a damp location for 20 years ! The wood had disappeared and the aluminum had disintergrated. When I looked at the price of new ones and the quality I knew I must be able to do better. I wanted a steering wheel that looked like a genuine piece but had an outside diamenter of 14 1/2" and had a rim thickness of 7/8". The Jag rim to me seems to thin!
Soooo I found an old City stop sign, these are made from 3/16" thick tempered aluminum. After using a hair dryer and peeling the STOP letters off of it, I used the old steering wheel to trace the shape onto the former sign. This I then cut out with a fine tooth jig saw. The holes were made the correct size with "hole saws". I made the edge rim 7/8" wide to provide a more comfortable grip. If you want to make your steering wheel flat like Jaguars cut the whole thing out as one piece. If you want to make the wheel dished in about 3/4" for a better appearance, you will have to cut out a rim seperratly and weld the too pieces together. I then sanded and smoothed the aluminum and buffed the spokes to a high polish.
I used old skids for the wood edges, planning it down to 3/8" thick and gluing them to the aluminum rim with lots of 5 minute epoxy.
After much sanding and shaping I stained and varnished the wood rim with gloss polyurathane. You can rivet the wheel to the original hub or use flat head stainless machine screws like I did. The heads of the screws are hidden by the horn button. The dollar was spent on the old wooden skid !
Take a look at the pictures, let me know what you think.

Nice! Very crafty.

The early E-types had the wood riveted to the aluminum.

That is an ingenious undertaking me lad. Nice work!

Outstanding!