Upgrades 4. Steering Rod Carbon Wrap

One thing that always stands out when looking at the front of the car is the unfinished steering rod arms. Not only do they look unfinished, they are one of the first items that corrode once the car is on the road. The factory now fits some heat shrink (15mm I think) around the cars that they build and I saw this when I took my car in for PBC.

There are a few options here; heat shink, carbon sleeves and vinyl wrap. The first two involve removing the steering arm from the uprights, and removing the track rod end, which I'd rather not do now the car has had all the tracking setup. So I've decided to go down the route of the carbon vinyl wrap instead.

As this part is exposed to the elements, I decided not to skimp, so I went for an proper 3M carbon vinyl wrap suitable for cars. I don't want it peeling off or looking tatty so I decided that a more official product would be better in this case. I chose to go with this 3M Carbon Fibre Vinyl (20cm x 152cm). You can easily get the 10cm one but I decided there were possibly other things that I may wrap in the future.

All in all a pretty simple job, I chose to snip off the zip tie on the steering rack end, and push back the cover so I could get the vinyl wrap further on so the edges were covered. I also pushed the solid rubber as close to the wheel as it would go to get the main rod covered. After this I then moved the solid rubber block to the other side of the rod, and then applied another smaller piece where this will sit, just to cover the whole rod. I then re zip tied the steering rod cover and moved the solid rubber part back into place. These were located so no edges of the vinyl were visible to avoid it peeling or the weather getting in. Of course there is a join running all along the under side, but this cannot be avoided using this technique.