How to fix loose steering wheel foam

TH99TJ

TJ Enthusiast
Joined
Apr 27, 2019
Messages
127
Location
Litchfield Park, AZ
I have looked all over the place for info on this repair without success, so here is my fix. The foam cover on my 99TJ steering wheel had broke loose near the top of the wheel from the inner frame. It would squish around twisting and moving on the inner frame as I drove. I picked up some 30 min epoxy the thin stuff, some 20ML syringes and 16g x 1inch needles (Tractor supply) vet supplies. I picked up 3 syringes and ended up only using 2. Mix up 8-10 ML of epoxy and inject the wheel on each side around 10 and 2 position (where the looseness started. 8-10 ML on each side working the epoxy around the wheel inner structure. You can tell when you have enough epoxy and it spread everywhere it needs to be by the feel. It goes from a sticky funky feel to a slimy lubricated feel as you twist the foam on the structure. You twist the foam and kinda milk the epoxy around the frame till your sure it's evenly dispersed. Have a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a roll of paper towels at the ready! Clean up any messes immediatelly with the alcohol and paper towels. Where the injection sites are the epoxy will continue to ooze out a little, wipe it up till it either stops or almost stops. The little spot/bump can be easily picked off after the epoxy cures a little bit, don't let it completely cure or it will possibly take some of the wheel with it when you pick it off. Adjust the foam on the frame to where its supposed to be before it cures. Once the epoxy cures the foam is well bonded to the frame, no squishing around and you can not tell it was repaired. A tip is to twist lock the needles into the syringes and then tape them in place or they can pop out and make a huge mess as you are pushing like hell to get the relatively thick epoxy into the wheel. I just did this repair today, if the repair fails or causes any issues I will update this post. Also, I tried super glue on my XJ wheel with the same issue same injection method, I do not recommend it! epoxy is the better choice.
 
So here is the update. Almost two months now. This fix works very well! I have put probably close to 1500 miles on the TJ since the epoxy injection. I was out in the desert wheeling for a week while we went out for deer season plus a bunch of freeway miles to CA and back. There are no signs of it coming loose, it feels like a wheel should feel and you can not tell I did the injections (visually)!
 
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Reactions: BradyW and Chris
This solution is super interesting, I’ll try it myself in few days and let you know.
I’m surprised that having the foam loose on the steering wheel seams quite an uncommon issue