Boxster Project: Steering Wheel Cover
Leather steering wheel: Color-treat it cover it???
After 23 years and 210K+ miles, the leather on the Boxster’s steering wheel needed a “refresh.”
A future project will be to color-treat the leather itself, and that DIY day will come, but someone posted on a Boxster forum about some good-looking covers, and that is the road we took for now.
Faded steering wheel leather – no longer black.
Carbon Fiber Cover
The covers were listed as:
- Carbon Fiber, and
- Compatible with round and D-Pattern steering wheels.
Doesn’t look like much, but clipped onto the steering wheel…woo-wee!
We can feel the weave of the carbon fiber on the covers. The surface does appear to be carbon fiber, but the core of the cover is clearly some kind of plastic.
Very very very nice look and feel.
Carbon fiber on the out, plastic on the in – a good way to keep the cost down.
At the price offered, the covers were very well made and an excellent value for the money.
Installation
To install, we just pressed the cover into place.
NOT a carbon-fiber handlebar mustache.
The installation of the covers are quick and not permanent; they are held in place by tension and friction. That is a good thing, as trying different placements was the only way to find out where we wanted the covers to go.
Up there…down there…it all depends on where you put your hands when driving.
We had to determine for ourselves which orientation of the installation looked better, the left one (up) or the right one (down).
A subtle difference, but when gripping them while driving, it might make a difference.
After a few test positions, we finally settled on having the longer ends at the 10-2 position with the mid-bump at the Tip controls (instead of pointing to the space below them). This alignment gave us the most natural feel when our thumb is at 9 or gripping at 10.
Yeah, this is what works for us.
We are adapting to the “adjustment” is the feel of letting the steering wheel recover after exiting a turn, but we expect that it will feel more natural after a week or two.
Not bad, not bad at all…
We have to say, while they are not everyone’s style, these covers are starting to grow on us. What that means is we might push off that leather color-refreshing just bit further out…
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