hi, and car restoration

G

gcb

New member
Hi everyone.



i reached the forum searching for ways to clean leather on my old '91 car.



now i'm trying to figure out the best way to restore my steering wheel.



What's the best section of the forum to ask about restoration?



it's a leather bmw one. it does not have a lot of bad product cruft on it. just 10yr of use. it's smelling bad too :)



my plan is to use warm water, a neutral soap w/out salt, and a tooth brush.



is it bad if i 'soak' it too much? i will plan not to, but it may happen.



also, what's inside those leather wheels? just the regular rubber? or some kind of fiber that the water could ruin?



and yes, it's out of the car.
 
too impatient. just went thru with the plan.



put wheel under sink and brushed it off.



on the back, near the stitches there were some pretty disgusting dirty pockets... two short sessions of light brushing with soap and warm water just dissolved those.



what is still giving me problem is the dirt in the leather itself... i can see it's not right... but i can't tell if it's the leather cracking or dirty.



when i wash it just using my hand, water and soap, some dark water runs from some spots.... but i'm unsure if it's dirt or leather tint. so i stopped.



the bad smell is gone :) well it was gone, until i had the brilliant idea of applying neatsfoot oil to the rough spots... i forgot how bad that thing smells... hope it will go away quickly as it does on my strops.



pics to follow
 
before:





after first round of scrubbing. plastic still dirty:





after neatsfoot oil and a few hours or fresh air:







My worst spot:





on the last pic the flash created some artifacts with the cloth from the towel i used to dry it... if you click on the pic and zoom to the max it's better to see the leather texture.
 
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