I wanted to nickel plate the steering wheel nut so I did some research and found it is dead simple. It requires white vinegar, salt, a 4 volt 1 amp power supply and some nickel strips available from:...you guessed it Amazon!! If interested go to youtube and have a look at "nickle plating".
The hub on the original steering wheel is a zinc casting and it had started de laminating badly.
Among all the parts I got was a machined hub to accept a modern style wheel. I decided to take this and modify it by adding a lid and milling slots to fit the spokes of the original wheel. Some tricky work but it came out very nice.
Doing this required removing the zinc from the wheel hub; not an easy task.
Machining the slots in the hub. Did the same for the lid and some filing to match them up.
I had to machine a fake nut that would hold the wheel to the steering shaft. I plan to nickle plate it next. The finished product came out nice I think.
Still haven't gotten the engine back yet so other project move on. I have renewed the registration plate and I had a new wheel cover made by a friend; also installed the luggage rack. I bought some oval head screws but found they stuck up too high due to the angle of the chamfer. I put them into the lathe and made appropriate cuts to change the angle. Better fit now.
The car had been registered by the previous owner as a car to avoid the helmet laws. I was unable to change that when I registered it. I'll have to live with the HUGE tag. The front plate is in progress.
I installed the shaft and gearbox yesterday. I used this bicycle inner tube to go over the input gear and a sleeve glued to the propshaft. This was a perfect fit. The RTV got smoothed out more before it was bolted up.
