Well definitely ran into my fair share of issues with this steering wheel adventure.
Once the thumb grips had set and dried, I applied the padding
Got the cover lined up
Removed the plastic trim on the rear of the wheel
Got the bottom section sewed up
I then applied some fabric glue to the left right and top of the wheel. I didnt want to glue it before sewing the bottom to allow me to shift the cover around as needed to get it perfectly aligned, and I wasnt 100% sure it was perfect until the bottom was together and I did end up having to shift it a bit.
Apparently Alcantara is very porous and the glue being as thin as it was, all pooled up at the top of the wheel as i had it angled top side down when putting the glue on, and as soon as I pressed the cover down to let the glue set the glue made it's way right through the Alcantara on the top as seen in this picture
If anyone has any recommendations 9n how to clean the Alcantara without ruining it further let me know, worst case I can probably swing replacing that section of the wrap using the old piece as a template if I can find matching Alcantara to use, but I'd rather not go that far.
The entire top section of the wheel is where things got annoying, with the glue showing through the material and me snapping the thread a whole bunch trying to pull the material tight, I was getting a bit impatient.
This knot didn't help my sanity either. I'm familiar with sewing, I'm apparently a natural at it because I destroyed the sewing section of my home ed class in HS, so i knew roughly how much thread i needed with the pattern i was doing to make it around, and I had just enough left, and didnt have enough to afford snapping anymore and certainly couldn't cut this knot and start with more thread... so 40 min later I got this damn knot undone
Sewing done, glue on top is way less noticable now that's it's pretty much fully dried, and with the exception of some excessive wrinkling on the left side due to who knows what it's looking pretty spiffy.
Installed and looking extra jank, however still managed to look 10000x better than the ratty stock leather
My OCD will eat me alive so I am going to be pulling the wheel back out probably Monday and picking some new thread up and redoing atleast the top stitching, possibly the sides aswell, but the bottom came out perfect so atleast i got that going for me.
I doubled up the bottom stitching and it is extra tight, I'm thinking I wanna try that the rest of the way around, while the stitching pattern I used looks good when it's a single run and a little spread out, the bottom being doubled pulled the leather perfectly tight and looks really clean imo. I dunno. Luckily it's not too hard to restitch and hopefully if it sits in the car the next few days it will start to take the shape of the wheel and be easier to sew next go around
Also tossed on my ebrake boot which looks extra sick but I got to adhere that to the console for it to be picture worth.