Leather Hero steering wheel restoration review

[PranK]

A few years ago I bought a BMW Individual steering wheel for my E90. My car is the non M-Sport so it came with a bus sized steering wheel which was thin and horrible.

The BMW Individual wheel is thick and soft and just really nice but it left a lot to be desired regarding its condition. These wheels in good nic go for stupid money and I grabbed this for $250.

I find steering wheels to be really important to the way I feel about a car. A shitty or uncomfortable wheel is just not going to cut it.

 

Also, for those curious, when you can't get all your desired options on a new BMW, they upsell you with BMW Individual which allows for a much more personalised car but with a hefty price.

 

So, I used my Individual wheel for a few years but the leather was really in a bad way and just irritated me so I replaced it with an X1 wheel which I quickly regretted. I decided to restore the leather on the Individual wheel before putting it back in the car. Note that the pics do not do the damage justice.

 

I looked at lots of products available to me and I was most interested in the Leatherique offering but eventually settled on the Leather Hero product because it is Australian and I like to support local. I found out after buying it that they are only 5 mins away from me which is crazy because if you know anything about the Northern Beaches you'll know that *nothing* is 5 mins away.

 

I bought 'The Works' steering wheel restore package which was stupid because I didn't use half of it. The Works is for cracks, cuts, divets etc which I didn't have. The Essentials would have been fine for $20 cheaper.

 

The Individual wheels have this trim piece through the steering wheel which looks nice but made it more difficult to restore because I kept having to re-tape it up.

 

The centre trim on this wheel in early pics is the X1 wheel trim as the Individual one (matte black) is in the car on the X1 wheel.

 

The instructions that were supplied were very light on details and were for the companies furniture leather products.

 

I started with their cleaner and scourer to clean the wheel. I had to scrub extra hard because there was a lot of remnants of my last attempt to restore using nothing but cheap black dye.

 

 

I then sanded with the tiny piece of supplied 800 grit which really could barely sand half the wheel but I had none of my own so did the best I could. Ridiculous area to cheap on.

 

 

I also grabbed an axle stand to hold the wheel while I sat and did the resto.

 

Next step was the primer which was super thin and went on like soapy water. The instructions failed to mention that this will absolutely cause high spots so waiting for the bubbles to go down is not clever. This ultimately stopped my wheel having great results in the end because of these high spots and no sand paper. Better instructions or videos would have saved me here.

 

 

It was then time to colour the wheel which was easy enough. The kit comes with an application sponge. I put the first two coats on by wiping but then changed to dabbing to remove the stroke marks in the leather.

 

More re-applying tape between each step.

 

 

After the colour it was time for the top coat. I requested matte for mine but wow, it is very matte! It feels almost like moleskin. I think I'll go for satin if I was to do it again.

 

 

The wheel has a heap of imperfections. Mainly relating to the primer high spots and also from adding/removing tape. I think once its in the car it will be hard to notice them and I think that after a few months of use it'll look better too. The wheel is very nice to hold and feels a little alcantara-ish but I'm sure that'll go away.

 

I still need to clean up the trim piece with some alcohol. The Leather Hero stuff is all water based so shouldn't be too hard.

 

I think Leather Hero are shooting themselves in the foot a little here. I think the supplied products are good but the lack of information is doing them an injustice. I mean, how hard would it be to film a few restorations for YouTube or put some how-to's on their site, rather than send out generic instructions that lack in detail?

 

I'd do it again because I've done it once. I might actually do this wheel again in future to get it right and maybe finish with satin instead of matte.

 

And, in the car with the trim on ...

 

I'll spend the next month or two in traffic working to scratch the crap off the trim. It'll give me something to do.

The wheel, despite its imperfections, feels awesome. Its very grippy, really comfortable and has a smidge of alcantara about it. All in all this was a success.