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Howdy! You may have noticed I've been pretty quiet for almost a year now, mostly because I live in Perth, and drive a '92 hilux for now. But, I have another steering wheel project I just finished off, so I thought I'd share the how's, why's and fails of it all. In the beginning... there was a $5 Nardi from the Kumeu swap meets. It was flogged, leather hanging off, basic disgusting wheel that old mate was very happy to see the back of. I already had my restored woodgrain Indy at this point, and on the same day picked up a near mint Personal Neo Grinta in black leather for a steal, so needless to say the priority for this one was extremely low. Fast forward many many moons. I grew restless. Had been using the Personal for some time in my daily hilux but wanted something new. I had already torn off all the old leather back in NZ and had packed all my steering wheels into my carry on luggage at the Christmas break, but dammit I'm blathering here. TL;DR - it was just naked foam and alloy and I had to do something about it. First thing was to get rid of the ugly foam spoke connections, making the spokes longer and sexier. Trimmed them off with a craft knife... Giving me... My first idea was to use handlebar tape from a fixie bike. Not a great solution, being major PITA to wrap, spokes too wide to wrap around in a pretty way, just pure shite. Pic for ref... It was a load of wank. New Idea was to wrap it cord similar to the cars of old. But, I wanted something with a bit more Japanese flavour (ramen sachet) so I studied some samurai handles to get ideas and try to figure out a knotting technique that would work. I tried a few different ones, one that spiralled around the rim, some over locking etc, but by far the best looking and easiest to make was the one I ended up going through with. Spiralling jiggery pokery... And preview of the sexiness ahead... I used about 8 to 10 metres of 550 paracord, with the guts pulled out of it. That makes it lay much flatter over the rim, and keeps the wheel from becoming excessively bulky. It's a bitch to de-core a huge length of paracord but it can be done. Simply push the cover down so you can grab the inner strands (white usually) and tie a knot with the core strands to something solid. You'll need gloves or a very well callused wanking hand for the next bit as you basically pull the bunched up cover down over the core. You'll need to do many many trips up and down the length of cord, pulling the slack down until you feel the cover get thinner between the fingers when the cover slips of the end. It takes a while and can be frustrating, get some beers. It gets easier towards the end when there is less friction and distance to cover. As you make progress, keep retying the core knot to your solid thing (the wifey doesn't like this joke so don't even try using her leg), so that you don't have to walk as far. Once your cord is de-cored you are ready... for a bong rip and another beer probably, because the monotony is about to commence! You can very easily tie this wrap with a huge length as you never have to pass the length of cord through the spokes, thus elimanating the potential for frustration when you run out of cord three knots from the end. Start hard up against a spoke, by trapping the tail of the cord under the first knot you tie. Make a loop from the back of the wheel towards the front (the part facing the driver). With the your finger, hold the loop in place, and using the long tail make another loop going behind the wheel up the opposite side from where you started, and up through the first loop. Using the second loop, tighten the first loop leaving the second loop wide enough to do it all over again. Note that while the tail looks like it's coming from under my thumb it isn't. It pays to watch how you handle the loops here, it's bit of muckery but try to make sure there are no twists in your loops, always lay the cord the same way, and dress (tidy) the cord as you go because doing it later sucks balls and is nearly impossible. Pay attention also to the wraps around the wheel, as they can overlap each other when you're tightening the loop up, and this makes the grip a more uncomfortable than it should be. Keep looping and tightening, looping and tightening... When you eventually reach the next spoke, have a kit kat. And do something else for a while. Otherwise you'll probably not be able to use your fingers for anything decent for quite some time (wife hates that joke too). Ignoring the left hand part of my knots in the next image, you can see how to finish your wrap next to a spoke. simply pull the tail through the last loop, and cut it 100mm away and tighten it up nice. This'll give you a bit to trim later on when you wrap the spokes, laying that short tail neatly underneath the spoke wrap to trap it in place. When you can be arsed, wrap the next spoke section. Pretty soon you'll be over halfway, and then you'll want to bang the rest out that night so you can use it. In this pic you can see the long tails of finished sections and one of my spoke wraps trapping another beginning/end. Then eventually... Hopefully that last pic is big enough to give an idea of the spoke wrap areas, there's no secret to them, I just wrapped it crossing back and forth until most of the black foam was hidden, then tied a reef knot behind the spoke. Give it a go. It's actually pretty comfortable as the knots lay in the soft part of your palm, although definitely takes a little getting used to after that super comfy Personal I was using. Enjoy! Chur to the chur. -cylinders