The owner of a Daytona wanted to put the original steering wheel back on his car to replace an after market piece that was on the car when he bought it. A very nice reproduction leather wrapped steering wheel is available, but wasn’t exactly a straight forward bolt on project!

The Nardi wood steering wheel was not in the same bolt pattern as the correct steering wheel hub found on Daytonas and other Vintage Ferraris. I suspect the wooden wheel was originally for a Dino, and the previous owner modified a Dino hub assembly to make this wheel fit a Daytona. Luckily we had parts and pieces in our stash to put together the stock set up.

The very rare items were the hub pieces that would allow the stock steering wheel to fit back in the Daytona. I also had to make sure the parts to operate the air horns were reinstalled since the Dino set up was different.

The next issue was with the horn button. Not only was the horn button the incorrect diameter to fit back into the stock bub, it was also a bad reproduction.

Not all horn buttons are created the same, and once you see the differences, it becomes obvious of the poorer reproductions. Look at the thickness of the silver outline on the prancing horse. The lines surrounding the horse are too thick, and the details in the horse are sloppy.

An original horn button has very fine details with a crisp fine line around the horse’s outline. These original buttons are very hard to come by and I’ve only seen a few reproductions that match this level of detail. There are a lot of reproductions out there that claim to be original or NOS horn buttons, but if you’ve never seen a real one, or noticed the differences, you’ll only be taking the word of the vendor selling you the button!

This one had a hairline crack in the button, but I also had another one that was not cracked.

The Daytona hubs came in black and silver, and we decided to install a black hub to match the parts we had to bring the assembly back to stock. It took a lot of fiddling to get all the parts to fit, but the results look pretty good!

Save the Date!

10th Annual Tomyang.net/Radcliffe Motorcars Spring Car Show!

With our tenth year, I hope I don’t have to tell you how much fun this cars show has become.

Where: Radcliffe Motorcars Company

12340 Owings Mills Boulevard, Ste. 100 Reisterstown, MD 21136

When: May 6th, 2017

http://www.rmccar.com/vintageferrarievent.html

Contact Richard Garre about registering for the event. Space is limited to about 90 cars, so register early!
410-517-1681