The grant signature steering wheel for my car has a plastic insert, it had some kind of clear coating that backed in the sun and turned yellowish, I wet sanded the insert for several hours to get back to the original color.
The shift knob is hand carved out of hard wood, while carving it the wood was drying out and wanting to crack, I coated it in many coats of gorilla glue (polyurethane).

The shift knobs needs to be painted because wood grain does not go with this cars interior.

Both the steering insert and shift knob will need a clear coating to protect the plastic and paint.

Because these are the two items that get touched the most on the car/constantly they need to coated in something that can hold up to being grabbed millions of time, friction, dirt, sweat and whatever else is on peoples hands.

Does anyone know of any type of clear coating that would hold up?

 

There aren't many coatings that are going to hold up in the car environment while being handled (These are the two most hard handled items in a car). A clear powder coat would work, but powder coating wood is very fiddly, you are right at the lignin melting temp and can easily destroy the product. Without knowing what the plastic is you may just melt it out.

Bare plastic works, that's most of a modern automobile, depending on the plastic type you are talking about maybe just polish it out and leave it bare, handling it is going to bring up the gloss over time. Wood in the automotive environment is going to take some maintenance, can always rattle can it and do it again when it starts to wear through.

Lacquer works good on wood, and the refinish is very easy when it needs done.

 

Break caliper paint lol

 

You are a genius, The better caliper paints don't come in clear, VHT caliper paint comes in clear coat but VHT paint sucks, cant powdercoat these parts but powder coat isn't a great caliper paint either, it doesn't like salt or chemicals, Por15 caliper paint (to be seen, that's whats on my calipers) has no clear.
The very best thing to coat calipers with (or just about everything) is Cerakote, I have watched there salt and corrosion tests and read all the product specs and no coating I can find is more uv, chemical, heat, impact... resistant, so after searching caliper paints and thinking about it I mosied over to Cerakote.com to see if the sell an air cure clear coat.
And they do, there are 4 choices for my application, Matte and clear in two different viscosity version their gloss ratings are : 5, 16, 19 and 20 gloss units at 60*.

"Cerakote Ceramic Clears are the strongest clear coats on the market. Cerakote Matte Ceramic Clear MC-161 leads the industry in hardness, chemical resistance, wear performance and UV stability. As a matte, air cured, ceramic clear coating, MC-161 can be used as a top coat over several materials such as metals, paints, composites, plastics, hydrographics, PVD and more."

"Cerakote Matte Ceramic Clear MC-157 is a lower viscosity version of MC-161 and can be applied at lower film thicknesses (.25 mil) where tolerance is critical. Cerakote MC-157 leads the industry in hardness, chemical resistance, wear performance and UV stability. As a matte, air cured, ceramic clear coating, MC-157 can be used as a top coat over several materials such as metals, paints, composites, plastics, PVD and more."

Here is the thing, in 2021 I decided to powder coat parts instead of coating them in por15, cost less, easier, less mess, faster... so I built a new spray booth and pulled out my powder coating stuff last used in 2009, while searching for powder coat I came across Hydrographic dipping and though this is really cool but they claimed hydrographic dipping could not be use over powdercoat so it wasn't so cool anymore (durability over looks), then I found pictures of a rim someone powder coated white, added cartoon like hydrographics and powder coated in glowbee glow in the dark powdercoat, to me the rim looked ridiculous but I read his whole write up and the hydrographic film survived the clear coat curing process in the oven. So hydrographic dipping was cool again. By this time most of the parts on the car had been powdercoated and building a proper hydro dip tank was put on hold. The only things I still planned to dip where some small fuse box covers, cruise unit cover and air flow meter cover (all plastic) but like the shift knob and steering wheel insert I wondered what to clear them in. And now I know.

The lower viscosity clears don't mention hydrographic application so gloss choices would be 5 or 20. Don't want the insert and knob too glossy but don't want the hydrograhics too matte. This stuff is 60$ a pint so I would want to use the same one for all the parts.
I will have to contact Cerakote and find out if the lower viscosity matte 16 gloss units clear works the same with hydrographics.

Thank you TurboSnake.
The best thing to paint calipers in is cerakote, it comes in clear, can coat plastics and paint and outperforms any other coating many times over.

 

Clear gloss clear polyurethane is insanely durable, cheap, and you can put it on really thick. Its what I'd put on a wood shift knob.

 

That is more or less what I used when carving the shift knob, when I was almost finished carving it, it started to crack so I used rubber gloves to coat it multiple times with original gorilla glue ( polyether-type polyurethane resin formula) because that's what I had, It soaked deep into the wood and kept it from drying and cracking.

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Wish I would have color stained it first. Wood has no place in a car.

I could have carve it out of aluminum but it would be very cold to grab in the winter, I worried the aluminum threads would strip, and the only solid piece of aluminum I had was to small.

The whole thing has been (more or less) a bad idea, the shift knob is very comfortable to hold but sat at the wrong angle on straight shift rods.
So I welded up a custom adjustable rod to angle the knob.

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This means the factory Mazda shift boot doesn't fit and I had to some leather junkyard shift boots and sew them into one with a zipper to connect the wires.

Originally I wanted a steering wheel mounted button but didn't want to run a spring clock on the steering hub and couldn't find low enough profile switches.

I plan on hydrographic dipping the shift knob. I will have to look into how well clear gloss polyurethane goes over hydrographic film.