I recently had my steering wheel re-trimmed by Royal – beautiful job and I’m well pleased. Like many others though, I had a problem with broken securing pins on the Chrome-line trim, in particular the two pins/lugs on the reverse of the slotted trim piece. This trim is secured by two self tappers screwed into the pins/lugs from the reverse side of wheel. I actually have two sets of trims, but sod’s law dictates that the perfect finish trim has both lugs broken off, whist the trim with a couple of scratches on it’s front surface has reasonable lugs :headbang: I could have sprayed the good set black, but like the Chrome-line.
I have read several threads where others with the same issue have simply glued their broken lugs back on with two part epoxy. Well I tried a couple of times, but despite good surface preparation and two different brands of epoxy, as soon as the screws were tightened the lugs broke away again. In my case the slightly thicker covering and ‘springiness’ of the new leather covering increased the pressure on these fixings, exasperating the problem. Also one of the side clips on the trim which might take some of the pressure was broken/missing. As many will know the contact area at the base of the pins is very small – mine were totally wrecked and the thin bit at the bottom had snapped right off. This plastic doesn’t glue that well either.
Faced with the cost of a new set of six trims at £212
, the cheapest I could find, I came up with the following solution....
I have a Rivnut set in the garage, sure you are all familiar with them – blind fixings with a screw thread in them, which you set like a rivet. Think my set was £20 on Amazon a few years ago, complete with various aluminium rivnuts. A useful bit of kit.
I used an M4, screwed a bolt in to protect the thread and then partly flattened the base of the rivnut on opposite sides with a hammer and flat blade screwdriver. This enabled me to bend the rivnut to the same angle as the plastic lug moulding. I then lightly epoxied the base of the rivnut to the trim and just as it was setting, loosely fitted both back and front trims on the wheel to check alignment – you can adjust it with a bolt through the back trim. When it was set I applied a little more epoxy …. just to make sure. Cut a couple of bolts to length and its job done
Photos show better than I can describe.
Result – a secure fixing, which I could tighten up properly
Hope this helps someone.
I have read several threads where others with the same issue have simply glued their broken lugs back on with two part epoxy. Well I tried a couple of times, but despite good surface preparation and two different brands of epoxy, as soon as the screws were tightened the lugs broke away again. In my case the slightly thicker covering and ‘springiness’ of the new leather covering increased the pressure on these fixings, exasperating the problem. Also one of the side clips on the trim which might take some of the pressure was broken/missing. As many will know the contact area at the base of the pins is very small – mine were totally wrecked and the thin bit at the bottom had snapped right off. This plastic doesn’t glue that well either.
Faced with the cost of a new set of six trims at £212
, the cheapest I could find, I came up with the following solution.... I have a Rivnut set in the garage, sure you are all familiar with them – blind fixings with a screw thread in them, which you set like a rivet. Think my set was £20 on Amazon a few years ago, complete with various aluminium rivnuts. A useful bit of kit.
I used an M4, screwed a bolt in to protect the thread and then partly flattened the base of the rivnut on opposite sides with a hammer and flat blade screwdriver. This enabled me to bend the rivnut to the same angle as the plastic lug moulding. I then lightly epoxied the base of the rivnut to the trim and just as it was setting, loosely fitted both back and front trims on the wheel to check alignment – you can adjust it with a bolt through the back trim. When it was set I applied a little more epoxy …. just to make sure. Cut a couple of bolts to length and its job done
Photos show better than I can describe.Result – a secure fixing, which I could tighten up properly
Hope this helps someone.
Hope it works well for you 
