Restored Ferrari steering wheel

Ferrari Steering wheel restoration

This steering wheel rim looked terrible, it was all pitted and past owners had attempted to polish it but this made it look muddy and ugly. Unfortunately, when it was polished the delicate detailing know as Geouche or engraving was destroyed.

My guess as to why this aluminum rim was so flaky and deteriorated was because someone tried to use an acid cleaner to brighten up the rim. This cleaner was soaked into the wood allowing the acid to really attack the aluminum. Many aluminum polishes are very harsh and the freshly polished metal needs to be sealed up with wax in so it does not oxidize rapidly.

Though the wood was not perfect we wanted to preserve this well crafted 50 year old material. We cut a new rim with a local water-jet CNC operation and put the wood from the old rim to the new rim. We sent the parts off to a specialist who knew the ins and outs of final finish and had the correct wooden dowels and rivets to make the wheel look spectacular. I will get a photo of the finished wheel soon.

With all of the incredible capacity of CNC machining, there is no one who is reproducing the engraving on thee wheels. I am shocked that with all of the high end restoration shops out there that there is nothing out there. Trust me, I have called everyone. There is a shop in Italy who sells the reproduction 250 style wheel on ebay. These wheels have nice engraving but it is a little more coarse and deep than what I have seen on the originals.

Maybe some day I will figure out how to do this detailing because it is used on a number of other trim parts from radio surrounds for 275 GTS to the ash trays used on nearly all of the road going Ferraris.