Leather Steering Wheel Resotration

Post by **bmdubya1198** » 07 Mar 2016, 16:23

I'm finally getting ready to get my car on the road, and I'm reconditioning my interior along with that. Part of that is replacing my worn out, ugly, thin rubber steering wheel. I don't have a problem with replacing the wheel, I know how to do that already.
My question is how I can go about restoring one of the beige/tan leather steering wheels. The black ones are hard to come by, and I can't seem to remove the airbag from the one that I was trying to get (3 times!!!). I wouldn't mind a beige one, being that I have the beige interior. The main issue with the beige ones, as everyone knows, is that they wear out and look and feel nasty. I've seen a thread about lightly sanding and re-dying one, and it looked great, but I want to know how far damaged a steering wheel can be that I can still do that. This one I was looking at appeared to be worn through to rubber. I realize this is mostly the dye that wears off, but this looked worse. I couldn't tell you for sure, I'm not a leather expert.
Has anyone successfully restored a worn out beige leather steering wheel? If so, what did you use?
I'd rather save a junkyard wheel than pay $150 for a like-new one as long as I can get it to look like leather, rather than tan dyed paper mache!

Post by **bmdubya1198** » 10 Mar 2016, 11:57

Dead section of the forum, I see.

Post by **MadeInJapan** » 14 Apr 2016, 20:58

I've never reconditioned one- I see it as absolutely difficult and most likely a failed job. I have sewn on new leather and it looks really nice.
Expect to pay around $50 for one...I tend to change mine out every 4-5 years on my S-70. Here are the wheelskins on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... kins+Volvo I know that IPD used to sell them too...shop around- you might find them a bit cheaper.

Post by **bmdubya1198** » 15 Apr 2016, 07:52

I was considering one of those, but I ended up picking up a wheel in better shape than the two I was looking at at the junk yard. It's actually in good shape, all it needs is to be dyed. It's not even sticky yet!
I actually found a good leather "paint" that seemed to work really well on my test piece. I'm going to dye the steering wheel this weekend and see what happens. I'll update everyone on how it looks and feels, and how well it holds up.