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Saturday, May 03, 2008
New Steering Wheel and Tonneau Cover
The rain was coming down this morning, so after breakfast, I went to the
garage and began taking the old steering wheel off of the 1956 Chevy. I
had ordered a new
steering wheel from Billet
Specialties and it arrived Thursday. I included a leather half wrap,
horn button, and adapter in my order. Getting the old wheel off ended up
being easier than I had anticipated. After removing the horn button I
just removed the nut and washer, then sort of slapped the back of the
steering wheel with the heel of my hand and it popped off. Now the fun
part, putting the new one on the right way, getting it centered so it
looked straight when the car was going down the road and then assembly
of the horn button. After sliding the adapter on three times I figured
out I was going to have to use a Dremel like tool to alter one of the
pieces for the canceling of the turn signals. It took about 5 minutes to
grind the piece to where the horn contact would work, then I assembled
the adapter with 3 allen bolts in the wheel for alignment purposes. I
tightened the nut and washer and the rest was simply screwing in allen
screws to attach the wheel and the leather half wrap to the wheel. The
entire process took over an hour, but the results were great IMO.
I
had also ordered a tonneau cover for the Triumph TR-3. I had taken it
out of the box and noticed it needed the attachment clips put on before
we could use it. After eating lunch in town, Linda and I began working
on the cover and I do mean working. We had to test fit the cover, then
determine where to punch holes in the cover. We started along the
windshield area and punched out about 12 holes, then took the cover off
and began attaching the clips that hold it on the car. This was a major
pain. We had to center the clips, then hammer them lightly against the
cover, then use a small hobby knife to make the holes for the clips,
then place the clip on the cover, then place the retaining clip on the
other side of the cover, then hold both pieces together while hammering
down the small flaps of metal that holds the pieces together. Then we
attached the cover back to the car, stretched it to fit as best we
could, mark more holes and continued like that until we had the entire
cover attached. Our fingers and hands were sore from all the pulling and
tucking to get the best fit we could. Linda test drove the car with the
cover on and half unzipped. It held on and she made it back. Our work
was a success.