Saving steering wheel...what do you recommend?, beautiful stock '73 2.0 steering wheel getting "crumbly"... Options

[second wind]

Hello teener family....I have what appears to be a stock leather steering wheel on my '73 2.0 and parts of it seem to be getting bumpy and somewhat crumbly....most of it is smooth but on the back where your fingers grip there is some deterioration going on. What would you recommend to use to stop the wear and save the wheel from getting worse? It is a really nice steering wheel and I want to keep it alive as long as possible.
Thank you all very much,
gg

[mepstein]

Are you sure it’s leather and not foam? Foam looks really similar. Leather will deteriorate, especially where the sun hits it. Foam will split, crumble, etc.
I can’t tell you without really good pics if you have foam or leather but the difference fools a lot of people.

[second wind]

Are you sure it’s leather and not foam? Foam looks really similar. Leather will deteriorate, especially where the sun hits it. Foam will split, crumble, etc.
I can’t tell you without really good pics if you have foam or leather but the difference fools a lot of people.

You know I've been wondering that myself for 13 years?? It has stitching on the inside of the wheel but I am not sure if it is leather or foam? How can you tell? I am leaning foam since I understand leather but I don't know about foam....how can I check and if foam how can I preserve it? Thank you very much!
gg

[mepstein]

Are you sure it’s leather and not foam? Foam looks really similar. Leather will deteriorate, especially where the sun hits it. Foam will split, crumble, etc.
I can’t tell you without really good pics if you have foam or leather but the difference fools a lot of people.

You know I've been wondering that myself for 13 years?? It has stitching on the inside of the wheel but I am not sure if it is leather or foam? How can you tell? I am leaning foam since I understand leather but I don't know about foam....how can I check and if foam how can I preserve it? Thank you very much!
gg

The stitching on the foam wheel looks very authentic. Half of the way to tell is if there’s no split stitching, it might be foam. The leather tends to split the stitching in the spoke corners. The foam rim also has tiny pits in the foam. Broken air bubbles.