A lot of us have discovered the factory leather steering wheel covers don't last forever. Mine was making my hands black. Not good.

I do a little leatherworking and have some black leather so I decided to make a replacement cover. Not an overlay but a 100% replacement. Nothing real complicated but it took a lot of work to get it right since I've never done a wheel before. Had to redo the stitching a couple times. Turned out great in the end. I used red stitching for my red truck. Plus, my other turbocharged vehicle is a VW GTI with red stitching and I like it.

Here's a rundown of the project..
Removed steering wheel. Removed back cover and switches.
Cut stitching and removed old cover.
It's made from two pieces so I cut them apart, laid flat, and made templates from a cereal box. Corn Flakes, to be exact.
Used templates to cut out new leather.
Removed thread from sewing machine and used it to pre-punch the holes for hand stitching.
Sewed the two pieces together to form the new cover.
Hand stitched it with two needles and a baseball stitch.
Used a heat gun to shrink it around the spokes for a "not quite perfect but pretty darn good" fit.

It should last another 16 years before I have to do it again, lol.

 

Very nice! I need a new cover for mine or if you happen to swing thru S. Texas let me know

 

Dam, that is NICE!!!! Thanks for the pics and writeup!!!

I imagine you could make a pretty good side line business if you wanted to, just by making and selling covers by using the templates you already have and selling the cover and instructions on how to stitch it. I KNOW that I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

 

I may be skilled in a lot of things, but I doubt I could even sew one up without it looking like a 5 year old did it.

 

That's nice work!

 

That came out looking great.

 

Thats very nice looking. I'm not that diligent and merely bought the real leather cover which fits over the steering wheel.

 

Yeah, it was a lot of work and mildly frustrating. And my truck was without a steering wheel for a week. It's really hard to drive that way, lol.

I would have to recommend the generic overlay type of cover unless you happen to have stuff laying around like I did and you can do without your truck for a week.

 

I am experiencing the same thing and came across your post. Can you tell me what type of leather you used?