Steering wheels....?

[I-Mac]

I am considering swapping the steering wheel on the S1. I am thinking of a suede covered wheel around 290mm? Will this work? Can you buy bosses? If you wish to use a removable wheel, are the bosses all weld on??

Anyone got any pictures of their aftermarket wheels?

[robin]

Eliseparts sell bosses and steering wheels. The bosses for non-standard wheels are pushed onto the spline on the steering column. They can be a pig to remove. There isn't much clearance between the standard wheel and the average driver's legs, so be careful that whatever you do doesn't make the car impossible to drive!

Cheers,
Robin

[Ferg]

I had an old Momo with an offset centre which looked really insanely small on my old cars but when put against the standard S1 wheel was an exact match. I'll take pics of it later. Remember the offset centre gives more legroom too. There are a number of hub options out there. EP have just released a rather classy removable setup but if you just want to replace it with a fixed one, EP do a basic option that uses the back structure from the old hub (this is quite pretty and has slightly better gaps at the column shroud) or ES do the Momo hub which includes colapsable section.


EDITED 'cause my brain is obviously defective at the moment

[Stewart]

Be absolutely certain that you want suede also. My S1 had an alcantara (I think) steering wheel. I found that it almost felt a bit "powdery" and hard to grip at times. Wasn't so bad if you hands were a little sweaty (yuck!) but all that meant was that the red alcantara/suede got grubby. I ended up during FF7 with driving gloves to get a better grip. I eventually changed it for a standard leather one.

Can't comment on size though

[roadboy]

Standard S1 wheel is not 280mm. They are much bigger than that.

300mm is just about the perfect size for the Elise IMHO.

If you're thinking about competition use then you definitely do want a suede one. Leather ones are too sloppy when you've got fireproof gloves on.

As Robin says, get a boss from Eliseparts. All their kits use part of the original wheel (the splined part) to attach to the column. The you can fit any standard 6 bolt aftermarket wheel.

HTH

Dan

[Dominic]

So Iain, Did you buy an elise then???

[Ferg]

TBH I always thought this was a 280mm wheel. But it does indeed measure 300mm across, outside edge to edge. This wheel was very similar in both diameter and offset to teh standard one. My memories not been too hot in recent posts...