Steering Wheel Reupholstery Project

[ChrisMelnyk]

Hi Guys,


I figured I would share as much as I can about a project I did back in May 2017 in case it would be of help to anyone in the future (I haven’t posted until now, as I’ve been fairly busy).

To begin, I always liked the 02 – 03 e39 M5 steering wheel, but they went for too much money in good shape, so I always put it off. That is until I stumbled upon a e46 M3 SMG steering wheel for cheap locally (I think I paid $100 - $150 Canadian). That was for the wheel, airbag, trim, and button assembly included.

I don’t have an absolute “Before” picture because when things look rough, I typically like to jump right in and fix it so I don’t have to look at it anymore, but here are some pictures of it after I cleaned everything up with soap, and repainted the trim piece.

As you can see, the leather was pretty worn.




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More to come.

[ChrisMelnyk]

Since this was the SMG wheel, it had paddles (which I had taken off in the previous pictures).
I intended to hook them up to my tiptronic, so I wanted to keep them.

Unfortunately, the titanium-colored paint finish was starting to crinkle which apparently is common.

I thought of sanding them and painting them black - but then I had an idea. I wondered if I could strip that crinkled paint off....

I didn't want to use paint stripper in case that melted the plastic, but I remembered my old trick with Easy-Off oven cleaner to remove paint.

That did the trick, and the paddles were down to black plastic. Also, the "Chrome" off the + and - symbols came off and left me with white, which matched the rest of the buttons on the wheel.

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More to come.

[ChrisMelnyk]

Here is the leather that I bought (I think it was 8 – 10 SF or so):

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2oz – 2.5oz is apparently the correct weight (or thickness) of leather to use.

The factory upholstery is cow hide, but for some reason, lamb hide is easier to get on Ebay and it can be just as durable (After 10,000+km it still looks like I just did it yesterday). The lamb leather also makes this the softest steering wheel I’ve ever felt….

I figured if it didn’t hold up well, I would just redo it – but it’s still good!



The actual colors for the thread are (Thank-you to another thread that posted this) :


navy
yale blue
scarlet

Pantone Process Blue (PMS 859)
Pantone Violet (PMS 268)
Pantone Warm Red (PMS 836)

But, getting the exact colors are difficult, so this was as close as I could get in the biggest thread gauge that I could get to work in my non-commercial grade machine without buying a ton of thread…. (I bought two shades of purple but ended up choosing the top one when I saw them in person):

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I bought this neoprene as the foam under the leather (like factory):

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And I bought this leather skiver so that I could thin the edges of the leather before I sewed the two pieces together then “butterflied” them for the joins. If you effectively thin a piece of leather from full thickness down to almost nothing, when you fold it back on itself, overall it is like a single thickness.

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This is an example if the doubling up effect near the join I wanted to avoid:
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(Not my wheel)

More to come...

[ChrisMelnyk]

I used a digital caliper find the exact distances between each stitch and the distance between the leather edge and the stitch and experimented to achieve the right result.

This was the original stitching:

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Here are some practice pictures:

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For the pattern, I carefully cut off the old leather, soaked it in water, and clamped it between two big boards for a few days so it would dry flat. It turns out that it also shrunk while doing that - which is how I wasted a bunch of leather (after tracing them out too small)….

I ended up photocopying each leather piece and used the enlarge function to enlarge it by an additional 6%. That worked to create my patterns on paper.

Here is a picture after I traced the paper patterns out on the leather:

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More to come...

[ChrisMelnyk]

I then sewed the pieces together and sewed the red and blue thread on the inside of the leather.

Test-fitted with only red:

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Test-fitted with blue too:

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After test fitting many times, I used contact cement (the brush-on type) to attach the neoprene to the backside, and put it on the wheel.

The tricky part is that sometimes, the leather goes directly onto the wheel like in the "9" and "3" spokes. I pretty much had to make a second pattern of how the neoprene had to line up to make it look proper.

Then I used the purple thread to join the sides.

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On right side side of the above picture, I had to fiddle with the leather (later) to make it suck in properly.

Another:

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[ChrisMelnyk]

Here are the after pictures:

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Overall, I think it turned out well.

I'll most likely end up doing to the same thing to the X5's steering wheel or to my original heated e39 wheel just as a back-up.

Also, I'll point out that the wrinkles/any puckering has since gone away after acclimatizing / sitting in the sun.


Anyway, hopefully some of you guys will get a kick out of this. I know I always enjoyed seeing other peoples projects. I made this sound relatively easy, but I skipped over the 30+ frustrating hours of breaking thread, getting tensions set up properly, learning there was neoprene foam under the leather in the first place.....

Great project though.


I also have installed a hidden automatic dash cam setup (95% invisible from the outside, 100% invisible from inside) too. I'll post that when I have a chance.

[ChrisMelnyk]

Few more:

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[HoZy]

Cool job, however no contact adhesive/glue?

[ChrisMelnyk]

Cool job, however no contact adhesive/glue?

Good catch. I chose not to use contact cement to glue the neoprene (with leather attached) to the wheel, because once the neoprene is stuck down with the contact cement - its stuck for good and there is zero chance of re-positioning without ripping the neoprene. If that happens, you would have to basically start from new again because it would be impossible to get the neoprene off the leather (to try and replace the neoprene). I went with the top rated leather glue off Amazon (even though I was gluing neoprene to the wheel...).

I had bought it before, and had done some test spots and saw that it took overnight to dry fully, which meant I had plenty of time to reposistion if needed.

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[adm750]

That's absolutely amazing...! It looks incredible !!

I really would like to have mine re-covered, but there's no way I ever thought of tackling it myself....at least not until I saw this thread. Mine is two-tone Cinnamon and Black (sport wheel)...and I'd like it re-covered in two-tone but use Alcantara on this round.
I might hit you up for some words of encouragement...lol...if I get froggy and jump.

tony

[BMW540san]

That really looks excellent! I'm fairly picky when it comes detail and I can't find any flaws. Plus the obvious satisfaction of doing something yourself.

[cnsorial]

Looks great. The seems are also very clean and tight. Nice job!

I thought about doing this to my wheel but chose to buy a rewrapped wheel and save myself the frustration.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[philly98540]

Damn, thats some serious nice work. Congrats!!

[waters17]

Excellent job! I considered buying one of those prefab kits, but your post has inspired me to DIY all the way. Thank you!

[Firstbmw528]

Looks way better than the 10 dollar kit I bought off amazon but it would suck for the steering wheel to be the nicest thing on my car so good work.

[ChrisMelnyk]

Thanks guys. If I can be of any help on your steering wheel projects - just message me.

Incidentally, I went through some of my things today (I'm in the process of moving) and found my paper patterns. When I get my scanner unpacked I'll try to scan the patterns as PDF's to make it easier for anyone else to do this.

I'll also add that when I bought the wheel assembly, I had a strong suspicion that it had a recalled Takata Airbag.


I read posts of BMW owners who had retro-fitted genuine steering wheels/airbags to cars that were not originally equipped with that specific combination getting denied the recalled airbags because their car and VIN did not show it.

Anyway, I could not find one online instance of when someone got a retrofitted airbag recalled - they just said the local dealer(s) denied them the recall.

So I called BMW Canada, told them that I retrofitted this one that I knew came from a SMG M3, and 3 weeks of back and forth later, BMW Canada coordinated with my local dealer to replace the airbag for free. So then I had a new safe airbag. A week or two after that, I drove 4600km (2900miles) from Vancouver BC to Toronto ON

[sealbeach740]

Great work!
If it matters, I also put an M3 steering wheel on my 2000 740i Sport in order to add the paddles. Did that 9 or 10 years ago, so it did include a Takata airbag.
I called & talked to BMWNA & they OK'ed the swap to a safe airbag & my local dealer did the swap for free (including a rental car).
Have you hooked up the paddles to the StepTronic shifting yet?

[ChrisMelnyk]

Great work!
If it matters, I also put an M3 steering wheel on my 2000 740i Sport in order to add the paddles. Did that 9 or 10 years ago, so it did include a Takata airbag.
I called & talked to BMWNA & they OK'ed the swap to a safe airbag & my local dealer did the swap for free (including a rental car).
Have you hooked up the paddles to the StepTronic shifting yet?

Nice to see I'm not the only one who was able to do that.

I actually haven't connected it yet. I started doing the research to build what would effectively be a plug and play harness (by ordering the correct male/female connectors and wire colors) so that I would be able to remove that wheel (and tiptronic functionality) easily and not permanently "tamper" with anything OEM.

Since it gets a bit cold here in the winter, I wanted to be able to put my "winter steering wheel" aka my stock 4-spoke heated steering wheel back on if I wanted to quickly.

Now I have the e70 X5 too, so that splits my time (I'm planning to put a completely hidden & automatic dash cam system in that too).

[sealbeach740]

While you're planning & figuring on connecting the paddles, this would be a good time to switch the "+" & "-" pattern if you're interested.
I've always felt pushing the shift lever towards the front of the car for a "+" shift is anti-intuitive. To me, you want to pull back on the shift lever for the next forward gear as momentum pushes you back into the seat. Likewise, I wanted to push the gear shift lever forward for a downshift, as your momentum is pushing you towards the front of the car. You can just swap the middle two wires of the four wires from the steptronic connector under the shift plate to change the "+" & "-" shifts.

[ChrisMelnyk]

I'm going to go against the grain here (I know its a popular mod for pre 2002 e39s), but I actually like the pull back for - and forward for +.

Maybe it has something to do with airplanes and how pulling back on their wheel makes the plane go up, for me it's pulling back on shift lever makes the revs shoot up and me accelerate faster

I know that's a stretch, but I always equate pulling back with going into hyperdrive (!!) or something

[geargrinder]

OP - AMAZING job and project. What determination, brother. Having seen what it took you, I definitely will never undertake this project! I'm sure its one of those things where the pros have tools and tricks that make it much easier... But impressive job for sure.

[geargrinder]

I'm going to go against the grain here (I know its a popular mod for pre 2002 e39s), but I actually like the pull back for - and forward for +.

I'm with your grain, brother.

When I still had the steptronic I retro-modded it for the old direction. Having had a few Tiptronic Audis in the past, and still having one in the household it was irritating as shizt to have the cars backwards, and while I can say it "feels more right" to me, maybe that's just because I was used to it, but I don't think so entirely...

Backwards = pulling back on a boat throttle, slowing down, pulling back on the reins, therefore downshifting as you decel... Forward = pushing throttle forward on a boat, accelerating, grabbing the next gear, etc.

I have the aviation analogy too but I see it differently... push the stick forward to nose-down and raise airspeed (upshifting as you accelerate), pulling back / up slows you down, as does dropping a downshift... Maybe helps having flown gliders...

[ChrisMelnyk]

Thanks for the compliments Geargrinder,

This project really made me appreciate how much work goes into the wheel leather upholstery. I did some googling before and used to scoff at the $300+ USD pro's charge for this service - not anymore.....

And to be fair, I haven't flown an airplane before, but your boat example makes sense. I'll borrow that analogy from now on....

[lesguy]

looks GREAT. I would have wanted it thicker, but overall, looks really really good.

[ChrisMelnyk]

looks GREAT. I would have wanted it thicker, but overall, looks really really good.

I'm on OEM type of guy with small hands