LEATHER WRAPPING THE STEERING WHEEL OF AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

You better believe that I laughed out loud when I read this Autoblog review of the 2013 Airstream Interstate.

This is why (circled price quote is from the same review).  Maybe I'm just too much of a stickler for detail, but I find it astounding that people are paying a buck and a half (i.e., more than what I paid for my third house which I purchased in 2002!!) for Interstates that are still as spartan up front as our recently-purchased 2007 is.  

Why not leather-wrapped, indeed?  I've been to Germany where Sprinters are manufactured, and they do have cows there.  Could they not scare up a few scraps of leather for a tiny bit of trim??

Zzzzz... As a female, I have a natural obsession with putting my personal stamp on my home (whether it's the wheeled or the fixed home), and this is what I call the antithesis of a focal point.  Our 2007 AI as it appeared prior to my fifty-dollar design intervention described below.  

Joking aside, a steering wheel cover was a practical priority for us, for three reasons:

1. We recently cleaned and waxed our AI using Airstream's recommended product, which is called Rejex.  Not unexpectedly, we got a small amount of the wax on the plastic steering wheel, which made it feel like a slippery fish.  This is a big, heavy vehicle and I was uncomfortable with the lack of grippy-ness of that wheel to start with.  The wax made it worse and didn't seem to want to come off easily.
2. We live in scorching-hot Houston, Texas.  An unwrapped steering wheel is a finger-burning steering wheel.  Leather's insulating property helps to minimize this.  
3. I admit it - I'm a bit spoiled (but not so spoiled that I won't do my own vehicle repairs and upgrades).  I owned a Toyota Sienna with a factory-installed leather wheel and I simply prefer them.  

So it was an easy decision for me to buy a wrapping and retrofit the thing myself (this project's DIY skill level: Beginner, assuming you have patience).  After shopping around, I chose Wheelskins as my vendor.

If you input your make and model, it should feed back the correct size which in our case turned out to be AXX.    

Screengrabbed from the Wheelskins website.  

I chose the color "tan" to coordinate with the existing AI woodwork.  The website has word descriptions such as the above in case someone's computer is not displaying the colors accurately.  You can also order swatches if you prefer.  

The online reviews for DIY wheel wrapping products largely say the same thing regardless of vendor - this job is a frustrating, time-consuming pain in the rear end.  The Wheelskins instruction page that came with the product was quite good in describing how to go about the project (be sure to RTFM carefully, in other words).  Here is a photo sequence that illustrates and expounds a lot of the points that the manufacturer made.

It is time-consuming and very awkward in significant measure because you have to pull that entire length of cord through each and every opening with every stitch.  Plus you have to pull tight as you are proceeding, and you have to progressively massage the cover into place so that there will be no wrinkles or skews.  

This is important - notice that the first stitch on the bottom was pulled through from the inside surface of the cover.  This is so that the eventual tie-off will not be visible.  

Wheelskins' instructions advise using a band-aid on your needle-push finger to reduce the wear and tear on your flesh and bone.  Or you could simply use a thimble, which is a centuries-old device that provides the same protection.  I have a few sewing skills, so I know these things.  

This is a good photo pair to illustrate the tightness concept.  See how my thumb is holding the last tightened stitch in place even as I am pulling through the next stitch?  

And then with that next stitch, I'm pulling down before placing my thumb back on it to hold it tight.  And I'm giving it a pretty good yank.  It has to be tight if it's going to work.     

You should be able to get your stitches tight enough so that both sides of the leather meet in the middle and completely close that gap.  

With respect to the wheel support posts, I only left three "dummy" stitches at each crossing (see manufacturer's instruction sheet).  I wanted the wrap to lie as flat as possible even though it's not physically connected to the steering wheel in these spots.  

This is fairly awkward, surprisingly tiring work (or perhaps I'm just old).  The online product reviews recommend setting aside at least an hour to accomplish the work.  I'd say closer to an hour and a half.  You'll want to go slowly and carefully because you are going to have to look at this thing for many, many hours to come.  

This kind of stitching amounts to mind-numbing repetition, and so you are going to make mistakes such as this one.  No problem - just pull the cord back out again and resume.  

Coming up to the point of beginning, here is the aforesaid eventual tie-off.  Now you can see why it was important to start the first stitch on the back of the front side.  The last stitch emerges on the front of the backside, so that when you knot them, the two strands are pulling together rather than laterally.  

And here is your money shot - the finished product.  Feels much better on the hands.  Looks better, too (*I* think).  

You'll notice that not every one of my stitches is in perfect angle repetition - I reversed the force vector here and there, and in a couple of cases, I ended up pulling two stitches through the same back-side hole.  The main thing to achieve is a tight cover with no sags or wrinkles, and you might find that you need to re-orient your stitches on the fly so that the finished product won't look amateurish.  Natural leather is heterogeneous, with different areas being a little thinner or stretchier.  Especially in the vicinity of the wheel hub connection posts, you might need to experiment in order to make the final appearance turn out OK.

As always, this is a noncommercial post presenting personal opinions only.  No manufacturer or service provider supplied any consideration in exchange for being cited above.

I confess a personal weakness for these "first world problems" type of memes.  They give me a much-needed opportunity to laugh at myself.