Technical 70's Plastic/Rubber Steering Wheel Collects Crud Like Magnet

There must be something wrong with the steering wheel surface because I have to carry baby wipes to clean the wheel a couple/few times a month when I notice yet another build up.

The crud comes off nicely with baby wipes and leaves the wheel with a semi-gloss sheen - but not like the "glossy" I've seen in other cars.

What is very annoying is that the wheel rubs my shirts which are continuously cleaning it (LOL) and I'm washing them excessively to remove the crud.

I'm thinking the steering wheel surface has "gone bad" and needs to be rejuvenated (if only removing the dead, outer layer.)

Has anyone experienced this phenom or has a solution? I have a number of ideas I'll save to later - don't want to bias replies at this time.

NOTE: I am not a fan of wraps or snap on steering wheel covers. So they are a last resort.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

 

Scoot the seat back a little?

.bjb

 

Clean with alcohol and wax the snot out of it?

 

I work at a shop that deals with original as well as reproduction parts. It seems like the original steering wheels, shift knobs, & heater control knobs, all collect this white fuzz, that needs to be cleaned with alcohol periodically, even when they are sealed in plastic

 

It's not a question of seat position - it's one of "girth!" LOL 54" waist & mini truck (My Bad)

I've never seen anything like a fuzz, the crud comes off with baby wipes (some alcohol, interesting) leaving a smooth seemingly "like new" smooth surface with sheen.

But I guess it is obvious, there is something "wrong" with the surface since it should not be a crud magnet. (The steering wheel on my 63 Lark I've owned since 1972 has never needed cleaning - I think my hands clean the wheel!)

Will try the alcohol. I've heard one of the CRC Brake Clean (red or green?) is very effective on plastic or old plastic - Honda Tech buddy told me about that one. Might also be a fix.

 

By "wraps", assume you're talking about this.....


but have you thought about this?

 

LOL or drink less beer.

 

.....It's just me, but I think I would reconsider using Brake Clean. That stuff is pretty strong.

 

Beer? LOL I'm thinking of starting again! (Trying to lose weight at 69 is next to impossible - no longer opportunity for that much sex! LOL) NOTE: you know, when you get old, they want to put you and your old car on the scrap heap.

That rope wrapped wheel is very clever. But either of those wraps ultimately are going to accumulate crud - much worse than a smooth (non-crud attracting) surface.

 

That's sort of the whole point, the steering wheel surface has to be damaged by ozone, UV, plasticizer problems, etc. and probably has to be removed to fix. However that is not to say there is "good" material under this "dead" layer - entire wheel material have gone bad, but I'm betting on only outer layer.

I have used the Brake Clean on some plastic a while back when I remembered which one to use (am waiting on Honda Tech friend to get back to me on that one) and it was OK on plastic. BC seems to be less aggressive than Carb Cleaner.

 

If you have a 70s GM cushion grip wheel, you just have to keep cleaning it, they outgas and degrade over time. Try WD40, Goo Gone, hot water with strong dish soap...what ya got to lose?

 

Mopar's had the same problem on their black wheels in the 70's.

 

I use hand cleaner to clean steering wheels.

Think about it.





(and there's a real solution, put an older steering wheel on it, one of those hard plastic ones)

 

Being popular Mopar, was there ever a fix?

 

Wash your damn hands!

 

I had a 71 LT-1 vette ragtop that had a black comfort grip wheel that constantly marked my golf shorts every time I got in the car with a golf ball in my pocket that I forgot about. I don't have the car any longer but every now and then I pull out a pair of silk golf shorts and there is that little circle of dimples permanently etched in the right pants pocket.

 

When I was younger (hell even into my later 40s LOL) I was a bad one to wrap a wheel in friction tape. I never really cared if it made my hands funky.

I think that before i could come up with a solution for the funky wheel I would have to know more about the wheel. I got a brand new repop Willys wheel in the shop now that if I use it will have to be epoxied for example. It will get your hand sticky on a hot day just moving it out of the way.

 

If you're worried about some harsh chemical cleaner attacking the rubber or plastic of the wheel, I'd try one of those hand-held household steam cleaner guns. You know, one of them "Steamin' Weasels" or whatever they call them that you see on TV on the info-mercials.

The hand cleaner idea sounds pretty good too. Maybe not the citrus based or abrasive stuff though. The gel/cream type cleaners like GoJo or what DL used to be like don't have real strong solvents and a lot of them had some lanolin in them.

 

I only use the citrus based abrasive hand cleaner...works fine, although it takes some time and effort.

 

Um... SILK golf shorts?!? How hoity toity!

 

Use Pledge. After you get the surface clean. Spray it with pledge, and wipe of the excess. If it can keep dust off of furniture for long periods of time. Why wouldn`t it works on everything else as well. Works perfect on plastic pieces as well. It kept my dash clean. I used to drive 120 miles round trip every day to work, for 11 years. Now I walk to work. 14 steps.

 

Hello,

With a name like Mr. Creosote, you should be aware of all hand cleaners and types of soap that get things clean. Creosote is hard to take off with just anything or any compound. It is like getting raw oil stains while working on outdoor oil derricks. On our old elementary school playgrounds, the district in their wisdom used old telephone poles as play area dividers. They were great and did the job intended.

But, one consequence was that if an old telephone pole was not treated before shipment to the school, some of the deep stain oils crept up and became patterns of any sort on clothes. Not a good thing. Plus, at the time, creosote was not good for allergies and contact with skin/eyes.

Before we found something to do the job, our teenage friend had a job working on some oil derricks on Signal Hill, the tallest hill surrounded by Long Beach city. He was lucky as he got paid quite well. Consequently, he had the best apartment in the whole area, overlooking the City of Long Beach, San Pedro and all points South, from Signal Hill.

He was actually rolling in money and we all were envious. But, one thing we noticed, his apartment sofa and chairs had plastic drop cloths draped over all of them. His Levis were two day wonders. After two days, he had to throw them away due to the oil stains everywhere. Even if they were new, they got stains from just working full day in the oil fields.

When we took our hot rod sedans over to his apartment, we had to be careful to sit on the plastic tarps. But, even then, we had to check out the clear plastic tarps for oil stains or spots. If we all were going out cruising around, our friend had to get his new Levis, shirts and everything else that was new, not anything he wore that day in the fields. Oil soaks through everything and stays.

So, needless to say, a lot of his salary, as high as it was, paid for new Levis, shoes, underwear and new t-shirts almost weekly. What happened to his old clothes? If they weren’t stained too badly, they were used for the next day’s work day. Needless to say, his car also had clear plastic seat covers and a clear plastic tarp over the seat covers. Double protection kept the car clean.

Was it worth the effort to earn such a high paying job, with all of the bad points in his daily life? Great apartment, new car, great views, the ultimate bachelor pad? Yes, for a month. But, within two months, he quit his job and got a different job and apartment. But, for a while, he had he ultimate teenage thing going and we all liked it, other than the oil stains all over the place.

Jnaki

There were several guys that were mechanic’s helpers back then. They had the grime on their hands and even with hand cleaners, the grime got on the steering wheels. It did not matter if the hand cleaners got used on the steering wheels, they still got grime. It was an endless cleaning thing using almost anything that was advertised as a cleaner.

Jump up to the era of Amway Products. It was one thing to find out that a liquid soap was so mild but so powerful that it actually cleaned oil off of little feet when we went to Santa Barbara’s natural seeping oil on the white sand beaches. If we had a case of the Organic Liquid Soap called Amway SA-8, we would have been quite wealthy.

Old story on steering wheels and clean hands:

old backyard build

The tallest tower had different plumbing parts to be whatever it gets to be. A swiveling fire hose, or machine gun or telescope were the main uses. Finally, below the tallest tower, was the main ship communication area. A real old wall phone, a shift lever and an old Moon Steering Wheel for those fast getaways…

We always wanted our son to play with stuff we got for him and this old wheel had been in the garage attached to an old tool cabinet door. When he was little, he wanted to be out in the garage with dad, doing what dad’s do out in the garage. I mounted two steering wheels on the two adjacent doors. One made it to the newly structured fort and the other one stayed on the cabinet. It was an 8 inch deep dish lowrider wheel that I tried attaching it to some scooters I made.

In order to clean off years of little kid greasy hands turning the large steering wheel for his pretend racing, I tried plain soap and car leather cleaner, to no avail. The built-in grease was tough and it took usage of this product called Amway L.O.C. (Liquid Organic Cleaner ). It is a liquid soap, but works like lacquer thinner as it gets just about anything clean.

It is so safe that it was once advertised as being able to wash dishes and use as a toothpaste. We did not use it as a toothpaste, but a thoroughly useful product for cleaning off oil blobs off of feet when we went to Santa Barbara beaches.

The old Moon Steering Wheel was now shiny and clean. (and not sticky) Good for the fort usage and miles of driving fun for our little toddler in his dreams. Something to remember, each old rubber steering wheel has seen plenty of action, with plenty of different hand compounds and different oils. So, once may not be enough. We used it at full strength. Others have used it diluted and it still cleans just about anything. YRMV.

 

Great stories, @jnaki, and I can relate. In my 20's I shared an apartment with a good friend. He was working at the time as a crane oiler for the Operating Engineers local. His work boots would be saturated with diesel fuel and hydraulic oil and the smell would permeate the entire apartment. I felt bad about it, but I would make him leave them on the balcony, even in cold weather. Thankfully, we are still great friends almost 50 years later.

 

My first real full time job after El Camino JC was working for Standard Oil or California in the Baldwin Hill oil field. I worked a Oil Well pulling as well as pipeline repair. I can really relate to what the thighs of a pair of Levi’s looked like after a day or 2 let alone your skin under them. We built a tumbling “steamer” to help clean them. It was a happy day when I moved onto the electrical apprenticeship. I link my wife was the happiest.

 

Thanks for the stories !!!!!!

Those oil rig stories are brutal regarding oil "contamination." Usually guys that work on those rigs are very fit and wear easily found sizes of jeans. A way too fat guy like myself would never be able to find my size in quantities locally (!)

A dear recently departed close friend had a "work" SUV he'd take up into the mountains where he was running some bulldozers. He always took a bunch of Jerry cans of diesel each trip. One one occasion, one spilled and the odor was pretty extreme after the mop up. (I've experience The Smell!) I think he eventually took the interior out and pressure washed out the insides.

Some wheels don't attract grime (might be better word than crud) while others do from what I'm hearing. I'll bet it is directly related to the type of hard rubber they were made from. Custom shops that do steering wheel restorations might know all too well about this phenomenon.

I suspect no new or newer car would have this characteristic - so it must be related to the wheel aging.

Plastics get weird after decades, rubber too - so the question is Is it a surface degradation or is the entire section?

I know early carbon fiber hoods and mega $$$ boat hulls were made with Low Temp resin and were subject to continual print through. Warm climates accelerated the process but in all cases, the process continued forever. The solution was the his of High Temp resin which was stable. The one fellow talking about the "sticky" wheel sounds like a situation where the resin was not fully reacted or simply the wrong resin.

I'm sure there is a cornucopia of science involved in completely understand Steering Wheel Material Science.

 

look up stories about screwdriver handles, too.

 

Ouch, I can see screwdrivers also having same problem. I have tons of screwdrivers - many very old. Trying to think if I've ever seen "magnetic" screwdriver handles! (arf, arf, I make funny)

 

You bet!! I have had several Snap-On handles disintegrate while sitting in the tool box drawer.....and smell awful too.....

 

Were they the square black handles on the Snap-On's?

Also on 8-track tapes:

8-track tapes cartridges have the pinch roller built in. Some are plastic and live forever. There is another type that is some kind of rubber if it sat for decades looks fine but it you touch it in the slightest, you will find the roller as completely liquified and is held in shape by the thinnest, delicate, fragile, "crust" that instantly shatters when you touch it. I had a friend whose entire 8-track collection was toast because of this, mine is OK. Repair videos refer to them as "gooey" and "melted." - and this is the entire pinch roller - not just some surface layer, in fact the paper thin surface layer is the only thing holding it in shape.

 

The plastic your steering wheel is made from is breaking down, you can't fix it or stop it, all you can do is live with the problem, cover it up, or replace the steering wheel.