Page 34 - Transporter Talk - Issue 197

INSPECT A GADGET
The Wheel of Fortune by Jeff Weeks
You may remember seeing our spinning wheel of fortune in "Olivia" at the AGM event last year. It's something we added to Olivia for a bit of fun and always raises a smile everywhere we go.
The wheel of fortune as we call it, was created as a push in replacement for the original disc we had made for our 2024 tour. This fits nicely to the centre of the steering wheel with of course a little creative engineering to hold it in place. This disc is removed while driving and replaced with our tour disc.
The background
Some T2 owners who've replaced their steering wheels may have encountered a lack of space between the steering wheel and the indicator / wiper stalks. This results in catching your hands on the stalks while moving the steering wheel.
Our solution was to find a friendly machine shop and ask them to make an aluminium boss to raise the steering wheel. This was very successful and after fitting the new boss, we were about to fit the decorative wheel centre when I had an idea. Should we make something quite different to the rather plain wooden decorative wheel centre for some fun.
Yes, why not we said....
So, our decorative steering wheel centre for 2024 was created, with of course several design and development changes before completion.
This initially comprised of:
A piece of plastic tube
The motor and centre mount from a carefully dismantled CD player
Some glue
2 short pieces of electrical wire.
Some Gaffa tape
An old CD disc
1 piece of photo paper
Our aim was to mount the tube inside the steering wheel boss, as a push fit onto the steering wheel retaining nut. With the aid of some Gaffa tape of course.
The motor with the CD centre mount would then be fitted to the other end of the tube. The motor would then be operated by a switch to allow the disc to spin.
So, after some initial bench tests we realised that the disc speed was far too high and could potentially result in the CD spinning into the air which of course is very dangerous. There is a solution to this as many will already know (regulating motor speed). However, we decided not to pursue the idea of using the motor to power the rotation of the disc. Instead, the disc could be rotated gently by hand.
In the true spirit of engineering, a new version was created, without applying electrical power to the motor. We will look at that idea again, regulating the motor speed at some point in the future, I'm sure.
34 | Transporter Talk Issue 197