Hand-polished steering wheel bolts.
I did a few small things to Sharka this past weekend. Stuff that might not normally make it to my blog. Just little things to get out of the house and enjoy an unexpectedly warm January weekend. Like polishing the above steering wheel bolts. By hand. For nearly an hour.
I bought these bolts from McMaster-Carr for mounting my polished Momo Prototipo. My regular Momo bolts have black heads. I figured I could order some stainless ones and pop them right on. Err…. almost. I opened the small box and started to swap out the black ones when I noticed the new bolts were stamped on the top with a part number. STAMPED! Deeply. Out came the Dremel.
I’m pretty happy with how the bolts came out! The hand polishing matches the wheel perfectly. (In other words, the flaws on the wheel and bolts match nicely!)
Vintage Inspired
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. White tire lettering. I’m hardly the first one to do this. Lots of google results for tire painting. A few guys on Clubroadster and Miatanet. But… well…. I wanted to give it a try. So out came my robot paints and brushes. A short time later… vintage-inspired tires!
Painted with a tiny modeling brush.
Not bad eh? You can buy a few types of muscle car tires with white letters, but not much else. I personally wish there were a few more options like this. And a few more 14″ tire options while I’m wishing.
Love it or hate it, there’s a good chance you won’t see another shot of Sharka with painted tires. After only about 25 miles, the paint is already starting to crack. It just can’t stand up to the tire flexing. I’ll probably get a couple weeks out of it and then take a scotchbrite pad out and clean off whatever’s left. Which is a bummer. But at least I got to see how it looked.
Meep MEEP! Yeah. Maybe the crappiest video ever. But it shows off my new Hella Supertones. They put the stock NA Miata horns to shame. You can actually hear them with the radio on! And other drivers can hear them too, which is kinda the point. The horns really have to be experienced in person to appreciate them. They don’t sound OMGLOUD on the vid. They kinda sound like a couple guitar notes. But no, they’re loud. Really. You’ll have to take my word for it.
And that’s it. That’s a weekend worth of small upgrades. Not much, really. But it takes me another few inches down the road toward Perfect Roadster Land.
You should post these on CR too!
I love all the attention and care you show to sharka.
Thanks! Really, I’m just giving my OCD an outlet.
This might be a strange question. But could you possibly create or recreate the wiring you did for the hella horns? I really appreciate your attention to detail and would love to know how you did it. My searches come up with too many different ways and would like to see how you did it.
It was so simple that I didn’t think to post about it. I ran a single SPST relay. The OEM horn wire switches the relay on and off. I got power from the fuse box and ran some 12 gauge wire from there to the horn. And it’s grounded somewhere in the engine bay. Nothing to it.
Hey, the tires look great. We can provide real rubber tire lettering kits that will not flake off or turn brown like paint.
See our kits at http://www.tred-wear.com
Usually I’d mark something like this as spam, but having just clicked your link, I’m gonna allow it. Fantastic looking letters!
Adam – I know this post is over 5 years old…but you also know that I am back on the NA hunt after about 10 years! 🙂
Where in the car did you mount the supertones? I have set that lived on a subaru, then a motorcycle, and now they wait for a miata. Was thinking off of the mounts for the front baby teeth.
thanks!
Jac
On the NA they live on either side of the hood catch. There’s a lot of room there.
On the NB, I mounted them a bit lower. I believe both are also on the passenger side. They’re not really visible from the front, but they are a bit more exposed and thus louder.