this was written by uthornsfan in the interior section of the site. I copied and pasted it to the KR section to see what you guys think about what he wrote





KR Leather Steering Wheel restoration

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*** DISCLAIMER ***

I am not a professional, attempt at your own risk

I just recently purchased an 05 KR (Love it) however the PO's didn't really take care of the leather. The seats were not that bad, minor stains/scuff marks, however the steering wheel was extremely dirty and had a very nice worn rough spot on TDC. It wasn't horrible but it was definately discolored/stained from hand oils and dirt and the leather had been worn enough to make it sufficently rough. I was planning on replacing my wheel or atleast getting it recovered so I went ahead with the following.

Supplies needed.

Lexol Leather Cleaner
Lexol Leather Conditioner
1x Dry Wash cloth
2x Damp Wash cloth
Bucket of warm water, or a hose sitting in the Texas sun
Sand paper with grit ranging from 400-1200

Day 1

1. Take Damp wash cloth and spray cleaner on it and go to town on the steering wheel. If yours is like mine the cloth will pretty much turn to a reddish mud color. I did this atleast 2-3 times trying to get as much crap off the wheel as possible. Use clean damp cloth to rinse the wheel and then the clean dry cloth to absorb some of the moisture. Once you feel it is clean enough, let it dry. I let mine sit overnight.

Day 2

2. Take your sand paper starting at 400 grit and start sanding. At first I used circles, left/right, and up/down movements. You will be able to see the different heights in the leather and for the time being you are only trying to even out the surface not get it smooth. Remember you do not want to just sand the rough spot you need to blend/feather it in so overlap into the good leather on either side.

3. Once the surface is even start using the finer grit sandpaper. Try to figure out which way the grain of the leather is going and only sand WITH the grain. Once that is to your liking it is on to the final step.

4. Take the lexol leather conditioner and spray it in your bare hand. Start rubbing it into the wheel going with the grain and trying to really compress it in there. An added benifit to all of this is your hands will feel nice and creamy smooth when you are done Let it dry and admire your work.

It isn't going to be perfect but it shouldnt be stained nor as rough as it once was.

 

nice write up...

 

I always start with a very warn to the touch bucket of water and a clean very light color micro fiber cloth and proceed to "warm up the leather" before I do any deep cleaning. It seems to "open up" and allow the dirt to soften. When I first re-conditioned the steering wheel on my 2001 I used the hottest water my gloved hands could stand and applied the heated micro cloth (wrung out as much as I could stand) and "steamed" the dirt to the surface as much as I could. Amazingly this seemed to work the best and then I proceeded to do the baby shampoo deep cleaning after my hands recovered from the heat bath they had (grin).

Don't know about the sandpaper / I was able to get my steering wheel looking as new as possible by just continually working the micro fiber cloth until that "reddish" color was just about gone from the cloth. I let it dry completely (actually 2 days) and then applied a few applications of the CPR conditioner.

I am a believer in CPR for all of my leather needs.

 

Nupe. Not on KR leather...

Lexol Cleaner ruined more than one steering wheel based upon posts that I've seen here over the years (and based upon my own experiences with the product). No product that says Lexol in an orange bottle will be in my repertoire of products for aniline leather.

 

Ive never used anything but CPR and the KR conditioner

 

I will second that, with the KR Conditioner being used about 90% of the time!