Thought I would share my most recent project - my redone steering wheel. Started out with a plastic steering wheel that I wanted to recover in leather. I also wanted a little padding, so I bought the complete kit from AGLA, which includes felt padding, leather, thread, and a couple of needles. I read on the early 911 registry that Porsche used 380mm (aka 914) plastic wheels and felt for the 911RSR thick grip leather wheels. It took close to two months to receive the kit, but in the end, it was decent quality.

I first sanded the existing paint, primed, and repainted the spokes with L43 Grey Black from Wolfsburg West. I read somewhere that this is a good match with the original paint and that proved true.

I then sprayed the plastic with some 3m spray adhesive and let it get tacky before applying the felt. I had to cut the felt to size. A little trial and error trimming was necessary. I held the felt with tape while it dried, and then removed the tape before starting the fun part.

Gah, more pics! Can't get into the middle of thew thread like this with it half way. I need the reveal!

I fit the leather on the wheel and started stitching. First though, I watched a couple videos on Youtube to learn how to do the cross stitching and baseball stitch pattern at the spokes. One word of caution. I started by holding the wheel loosely between two pieces of wood in the bench vice. Don't do that! It indents the leather. (Duh..) Luckily, the indent went away, but I wasn't too happy at first. Later, I found a better way to hold the wheel while I stitched.

Some stitching pics along the way...

And the final result! Certainly not perfect, but I'm happy with the results, especially on my first try. I did learn a couple things from this first wheel. Main point being not to let the leather bunch as you approach a spoke. On one of the spokes, there was a bit of wrinkling because of that, but I smoothed it out afterward with a little heat from the heat gun. Make sure to spread the "bunching" out over a longer area, so it isn't noticeable.

This was a pretty tedious project, but once you get the hang of it, it was almost fun!

Really nice. I'm interested on what the kit cost. I have a wheel I'd like to do.

Kit was $90 from AGLA.

http://www.aglausa.com/

The thick grip isn't on their website, but I emailed them to see if their leather pattern would fit over felt and they informed me that they sell the thick grip kit with everything. Only thing I must say is that the shipping and service wasn't good. You'll see the same thing if you perform a search on the Pelican 911 board. But finally, I did receive it...

looks like a great result. thanks for posting up your project.

Working with leather is fun, and you would be amazed how much smoothing and stretching it can stand.


Zach

very nice result for your first go at it...

What's the difference between the regular kit and the presewn kit?

about how much thread did this take? I need to restitch my wheel but not sure how much to get. would suck to get almost done and not have enough!