550 Paracord Steering Wheel and Grab Handle Wrap
12-18-2015, 07:08 PM
#1
550 Paracord Steering Wheel and Grab Handle Wrap
I have a 1997 F150 with about 86,000 miles. Due to the age of the truck, the steering wheel was starting to look a bit faded and worn out. I saw this cool idea online with Jeeps and other off-road trucks and decided to try it. It turned out sweet in my opinion! It gave my truck a whole new look on the inside, and the grab handle is a cool, rugged touch.
For this project, I used 550 Paracord (550lb breaking point) from: http://www.boredparacord.com/
Their products seem to be very high quality and I know a lot of people use them. There are hundreds of colors and styles of paracord to choose from, so there's definitely something that will look sweet on your truck. I purchased 200 feet of black and 50 feet of kelly green for the accent color. The wheel itself took close to 100 feet, and I wanted to make sure I had plenty left. Also, you will need a paracord fid (basically a big sewing needle) in order to do this project. They are a few bucks and I got something like this on Amazon: This project is fairly time-consuming, but is definitely worth it in the end if you do a quality job. This looks way better and is more permanent than any cheap steering wheel cover. Plus if you get stranded in the woods, you have 200 feet or so of survival cord
I have never had any experience with paracord or tying knots in the past, so I think anyone should be able to do this. You don't have to be a boy scout. I learned everything from the internet, so I will share my sources for this project with you. For the steering wheel, I got my info from: http://www.instructables.com/id/para...ng-wheel-wrap/ It was fairly simple and easy once I figured it out, just time-consuming. On my truck, I decided to break up the center of the wheel with a kelly green "Raptor stripe" and I think it turned out awesome. Just make sure to tuck and hide all of the cord under itself as you go so it stays put and looks clean. This is where the paracord fid is needed. After wrapping the wheel, it was pretty tight, but still slid around a little bit with good effort. I wrapped the finished wheel with rags soaked in hot water for a while, so it would soak into the paracord. Then, I removed the rags and used a heat gun on gentle over the wheel to shrink the paracord down a bit and harden it. This seemed to help make a difference. The paracord doesn't slide around at all, and it has a good, comfortable grip. Just be careful not to melt the cord with the heat, as it is very sensitive, and be careful with the water in your truck. Shouldn't be a big deal.
Wrapping the grab handle was a nice touch, and it went well with the wheel. In my opinion, the truck seems more rugged now. Figuring this part out was the biggest task, since I had no idea what I was doing going into the project, but I did a lot of research and figured it out easily. You will need to remove the grab handle in order to work with it. It was a pretty simple removal. Anyways, I used these Youtube videos to help me, and they did a great job explaining it better than I could:
I believe I tied a 16L 3B Turks Head on my wrap. There are hundreds of other wrap styles that you could use, but I think the Turks Head looked best on the grab handle. Feel free to play around on the internet to look for some ideas. Again, I used kelly green as my accent color inside the black.
I will attach my before and after pics in the next post.
Sorry for the long write-up, but hopefully this helps give some of you a cool idea and makes things simple.
For this project, I used 550 Paracord (550lb breaking point) from: http://www.boredparacord.com/
Their products seem to be very high quality and I know a lot of people use them. There are hundreds of colors and styles of paracord to choose from, so there's definitely something that will look sweet on your truck. I purchased 200 feet of black and 50 feet of kelly green for the accent color. The wheel itself took close to 100 feet, and I wanted to make sure I had plenty left. Also, you will need a paracord fid (basically a big sewing needle) in order to do this project. They are a few bucks and I got something like this on Amazon: This project is fairly time-consuming, but is definitely worth it in the end if you do a quality job. This looks way better and is more permanent than any cheap steering wheel cover. Plus if you get stranded in the woods, you have 200 feet or so of survival cord
I have never had any experience with paracord or tying knots in the past, so I think anyone should be able to do this. You don't have to be a boy scout. I learned everything from the internet, so I will share my sources for this project with you. For the steering wheel, I got my info from: http://www.instructables.com/id/para...ng-wheel-wrap/ It was fairly simple and easy once I figured it out, just time-consuming. On my truck, I decided to break up the center of the wheel with a kelly green "Raptor stripe" and I think it turned out awesome. Just make sure to tuck and hide all of the cord under itself as you go so it stays put and looks clean. This is where the paracord fid is needed. After wrapping the wheel, it was pretty tight, but still slid around a little bit with good effort. I wrapped the finished wheel with rags soaked in hot water for a while, so it would soak into the paracord. Then, I removed the rags and used a heat gun on gentle over the wheel to shrink the paracord down a bit and harden it. This seemed to help make a difference. The paracord doesn't slide around at all, and it has a good, comfortable grip. Just be careful not to melt the cord with the heat, as it is very sensitive, and be careful with the water in your truck. Shouldn't be a big deal.
Wrapping the grab handle was a nice touch, and it went well with the wheel. In my opinion, the truck seems more rugged now. Figuring this part out was the biggest task, since I had no idea what I was doing going into the project, but I did a lot of research and figured it out easily. You will need to remove the grab handle in order to work with it. It was a pretty simple removal. Anyways, I used these Youtube videos to help me, and they did a great job explaining it better than I could:
I believe I tied a 16L 3B Turks Head on my wrap. There are hundreds of other wrap styles that you could use, but I think the Turks Head looked best on the grab handle. Feel free to play around on the internet to look for some ideas. Again, I used kelly green as my accent color inside the black.
I will attach my before and after pics in the next post.
Sorry for the long write-up, but hopefully this helps give some of you a cool idea and makes things simple.
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BASEBALL0210 (12-19-2015)
