Between stripping more kitchen cabinet doors, I managed to give the truck its first spring bath. I was amazed how filthy the back half was. I should be able to keep up with garage dust from now on anyway as I recently purchased one of the California Car Cover Duster brushes. I’ve wanted one for years but only recently discovered Amazon sells the brand name item for only 15 bucks.
The Grant 502 steering wheel showed up, and was pretty much as I expected. It was worth what I paid for it. It’s pretty much a throw away item after serving its purpose.
Here’s a photo of it installed:
Driving the truck with the smaller diameter wheel had a nice feel to it, making the steering tighter when cornering. But as predicted I couldn’t see the speedometer above 35 mph without scrunching down in the seat.
It was in place for one day when my son came over and looked at it. He promptly offered to buy me a Mooneyes blue metalflake wheel (for my upcoming birthday) to get it out of the truck.
From a quality standpoint, it was pretty pathetic. Compared to my 40 year old Covico wheel the overall finish is relatively poor. Held up against a new Mooneyes wheel, the quality is terrible.
The chrome on the front is beautiful, but the back side of the chrome spokes have deep grinding marks covering the surface and the edges of the spokes look like they were stamped with dull dies. The “gloss” vinyl rim isn’t. It’s a dull rubbery looking surface more like an old tool handle than a nice vinyl steering wheel. It’s somewhat comfortable, but feels sticky like something is on the surface but isn’t. It would be far more desirable if it had the gloss vinyl surface advertised instead of the look and feel of an old inner tube.
So I pulled it back out, and today the new blue wheel showed up. Here are a couple of shots with it in the truck.
On further reflection, I decided the blue shift knob looked way better than the white one, even if it isn't as comfortable:
It’s a funny realization, but the dish of the new blue wheel looks shallower/flatter than the identical black wheel. But I measured both and they are 3.5” deep as advertised. Just an optical illusion. I’ll be posting a tech article soon pertaining to all the little differences I’ve discovered over the years of living with three bolt steering wheels. Hopefully it will prove interesting.