leather steering wheel restoration in general / was 'LX470 steering wheel restoration redux' (1 Viewer)

[John Young]

Hi all,

I've posted a few steering wheel photos, but I thought I would collect them all here--start to finish, especially now that I've actually finished!

The start of the story is my purchase of a 2001 LX470 with 38K miles on it. Really in great shape--even had the original dealer carpet protection on the drivers front and rear passenger area for some reason. One thing that did bother me was that the finish on the wooden part of the steering wheel was badly cracked:

It felt just rough enough to be annoying. So I decided to remove the wheel and refinish the wood (and it is wood on the LX470, unlike my LC which has some nice looking plastic), and also replace the leather with local camel leather, which I like quite a bit. Very flexible and durable and thick. Here's the wheel at the start just after I started sanding down the finish on the wood:

Here's a close up that really shows the problem:

Here is a photo after quite a bit of sanding and one coat of good quality spar varnish:

I won't take you through all the photos, but if you are interested they all are here. I sanded and varnished and sanded and varnished at least 6 times and even after that I was not quite satisfied with this:

(There are a lot of intermediate photos in the album linked above.) On my next trip to the US i stopped in at home depot and bought one of those 25 dollar epoxy tabletop kits. When I got back to Dubai I sanded again and mixed up the epoxy coating and applied it with a foam brush. The stuff is tricky. Very thin and it takes something like 45 minutes to set up so coating a cylindrical shape was difficult. I ended up having to flip it over and over more or less constantly to try to get an even coat. The other problem was bubbles. The directions suggested using a propane torch to burst the bubbles and this worked well. Spot heating with the torch also assisted in getting rid of runs--they would flow a bit if you pass your torch over it. Basically a good part of an afternoon to get the thing the way I liked it. Here's the result:

The finish is not quite perfect but really pretty nice. And I certainly did not want to spent another afternoon putting another coat of epoxy on. I figure 6 coats of spar varnish followed by a thick epoxy coat ought to be enough!

So then it was on to the leather. Now having done one LC and one LX I can tell you that the LX wheel has real leather and the LC has some kind of stiff vinyl on the faux wood steering wheel. It turns out that the leather wheel is much easier to work with. The leather comes off easier and at the end the leather is more flexible and you can stretch it out to make a pattern for the replacement leather. This was impossible with the LX vinyl covering--when I did that one, I had to make up my own pattern and it was a real pain.

I initially tried to use the old leather directly as a pattern:

But this did not work too well. They were not quite flat enough.

So what I did was staple the old skins down on cheap Ikea cutting boards, stretching as I went. Then I clamped the two cutting boards together flat and left them for a few days:

You can see here that the old leathers are much, much flatter after this, and quite suitable for using as a pattern to cut replacements (out of camel leather in this case). I'd like to add that it is a great idea to buy surgical scalpels on amazon--a hundred #11 blades and a stainless steel handle are just a little over 10 bucks on Amazon, and scary sharp. Xacto blades have gotten kind of expensive. Scalpel blades are not as durable and can break, but are much, much sharper, and at the price you can replace blades a lot more often. Never going back to Xacto. Here's a photo of me cutting out the new leather:

One of the biggest challenges when I did the LC wheel was figuring out the holes for the stitching. You have to be careful to have the right number in the right place. I found that I could use the LX leather holes as a guide for where I would punch the holes. Much easier.

Because the camel leather I was using was thicker, I had to cut away some of the rubber material of the wheel so the leather would fit in the gap between the wood and the rubber:

Then it was time to start gluing and stiching. I use flexible PVA glue for gluing down leather. You can clean up with water which is very nice. I used 'baseball' stitching as taught by a number of videos on youtube. Here's the start of stitching:

It is important to start at the juncture of the wood and rubber so that you have a neat joint where your hands will touch the wheel all the time. So you first do one end, then the other, and then sew the middle section. I used quite a bit of PVA glue and it works pretty good as both a lubricant and a gap filler. This thick leather is pretty stretchable, but it helped a lot that the PVA glue allowed it to move around while I was sewing. I also found that I could squeeze the leather to get the glue underneath to go where I wanted it.

And here is one side done:

And a week or so later, here is the wheel refinished and with both sides of leather done:

And just today, I put it on my truck:

I used black leather because I could not match the old putty color and also so it would match the leather on the shifter and transfer lever leather. I think it looks quite nice. When I put it on, it was a bit tighter fit than before because of the thicker leather and I was worried about the horn working, but it worked fine. I'm getting a little rubbing sound when I turn the wheel to the left, but I think I can work that out.

You may notice the black pad on the center console. The tan leather there was crazing a little bit so I decide to put a black leather pad there too. I'm not really happy with the result and I might re-do it in future. The real problem is that I misjudged the size and ended up having to boil it to shrink the leather down to the right size and it changed the finish of the leather for the worse. here are a couple of photos:

The pad was simply glued down with PVA glue and held until set with masking tape. The edges are a bit wavy because of the boiling step. I think I will just leave it most likely. There are other things that the truck needs.

I really enjoyed doing this little project. Took longer than I initially thought, but it was very rewarding in terms of the result. I really dislike worn steering wheels. It's also worth mentioning that this took me a few weeks, doing the work a little at a time. I used a donor LC wheel while I was working on the LX wheel. Well worth buying a cheap wheel on ebay so you are not rushed.

Thanks for reading!

 

[corboto]

Wow, fantastic job! Thanks for all the detailed photos.

 

[John Young]

Wow, fantastic job! Thanks for all the detailed photos.

My pleasure. Really enjoyable little project, and I could do it in my apartment. These days I have to have the garage do the heavy stuff for my truck here in Dubai.

 

[Pyrenees]

As an LX owner this is really fantastic to see. Do you have more photos of the wheel or the process?

 

[John Young]

As an LX owner this is really fantastic to see. Do you have more photos of the wheel or the process?

Sure, my pleasure:

LX470 steering wheel refinish and recover

and

Leather Work

 

[planomateo]

I need to think about this for the LS430. It has hundreds of cracks in the steering wheel. Nice work!

 

[Chrisek]

Thank you for this! I got a. 01 LX as well and the rim is completely cracked out (with pieces missing). I like your fix!

 

[Pyrenees]

Sure, my pleasure:

LX470 steering wheel refinish and recover

and

Leather Work

You are the man. I don't need this at all right now, but I know quality (or at least determination) where I see it.

Well done, sir. I have subscribed.

 

[John Young]

Hi All,
I am just finishing up work on a 2007 105 and because I have lost my garage space I am limited in what I can do personally. But one of the things I can do is refurbish the steering wheel which was badly deteriorated. Here is what the 105 looks like at the moment:

The steering wheel on there at present is not the original. I swapped it out for one from the scrap yard that I recovered in camel leather but frankly I was out of practice. So this weekend I redid the original factory wheel. Thought I might update here.

As started:

The first thing was to cut the stitching with a scalpel and gently pry off the old covering. With a wheel in this bad a condition, the leather was very fragile in spots. It is also important to note that there is a fold over of the leather at the portion joining up to the 'wood' section:

The good news is that the factory glue appears to be made to come off. It was pretty easy to clean up the residue.

 

[John Young]

It is by far the easiest thing way to use the old cover as a patter for the new cover. The problem is that it is all curled up as it comes off the wheel:

After experimenting quite a bit, I found that using an ordinary clothes iron you can flatten out the original leather pretty well. I did not use water because hot steam causes leather to shrink. The hot iron caused some shrinkage but it turns out that leather is pretty stretchable, and the advantages of using the old leather as a pattern outweighed other considerations. So, with some patience you end up with something like this:

I found that the best way to mark the new leather (I am using camel leather from the UAE on this) is with a leatherwork awl thing:

It is important also to use the awl to punch through the mark the holes in the original leather. It is very difficult to line up holes later on otherwise.

As you can see, it is not perfect, but one of the interesting things about leatherwork is that it is quite forgiving.

 

[John Young]

Now that I had the new leather cut out--making a bit of an allowance for longer legs and ends, it was time to start fitting. As I mentioned above, the end of the leather is actually folded over.

To do this effectively, you have to shave down the thickness of the leather:

Then you can fold over and glue with ABS bookbinding glue (water soluble until it drys, and removable later). I found it was very helpful to use a hammer to hammer the fold. It did not harm the leather and it made for a much tighter fold.

I then coated the old rim with ABS glue and started sewing on the new cover. There are a bunch of helpful videos on youtube on how to do 'baseball' stitching in leather and it is not too hard. You just need some big needles and some patience.

I did the two ends first, stretching the leather to fit, then I filled in the stitching in the middle, gluing with ABS as I went along using a small stiff brush.

I want to say a couple of words about the thread color. A light color is a lot nicer looking when you do it, but the thread picks up dirt and oil much more easily than the leather itself. I now like to use black or at least quite dark colors for thread when doing these little projects.

 

[John Young]

Here is the end product:

I actually like the little imperfections

 

[John Young]

Well, I am back at it again. This time for Mister Blue, the sunburnt 2002-2003 105. The car will get a good going through over time just like his spouse, Missus White, as time and resources permit. But the steering wheel I had the materials for already and it would be nice when PowerTec gets him back on the road to have a nice steering wheel.

Mister Blue is an ex-government truck and as such was fairly plain-Jane, which I actually like because it is less things to go wrong. The steering wheel, for example, was just plastic foam, not covered in leather. I wanted to get a little thicker wheel so my plan was to cover over the existing one. I gave the guys at PowerTec a spare 100 wheel so they could move the truck around and they pulled the wheel. All for the best because I tend to break clocksprings whenever I try to do that on 100 Series for some reason.

Here is Mr Blue's steering wheel:

Nice enough but the top part was pretty worn and was showing early cracking.

I had old patterns, but they were for the wheels with partial leather.

This time I decided to make my own pattern as a learning experience.

I decided to make the pattern out of masking tape, doing two layers, blue painters tape and then standard masking tape as a second layer (That is a 70 Series wheel in the back I'm also working on.)
I wanted the seam to be towards the back of the wheel so I found something of appropriate height and using a sharpie, drew my cut line.

Then I carefully cut along the line and peeled back the layers of masking tape.

 

[John Young]

I then had two patterns that were much easier to deal with than the old leather ones. For one thing they remained sticky. I then laid them out on card stock.

And then to give myself a little wiggle room I extended the length of the spoke portions:

Then I cut out the card stock.