Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[disepyon]

I see. Yeah I am not surprised either the cost to get a Steering Wheel redone. Ive checked into some local places where I am and even online, and your right, be best to buy something like a Nardi Wheel.  Though id like the Wheel to be thicker/fatter, for a thick grip. 

Ah, Kids, that makes sense now.

[Captain Obvious]

8 hours ago, charliekwin said:

I'm not sure you'd want to pay me what my time costs

Haha! That's exactly how most of my projects go:

"And then a completely unprofitable huge amount of time later, I have this...."

[esmit208]

Nice job with everything so far. Don't worry about the gas tank. It will be under the car. A coat or two of rubberized undercoat on the bottom side and leading edges will mitigate debris doing thrown up by the tires though. The big box hardware stores sell a one sided adhesive that goes onto the tank straps perfectly. Cushion is needed so vibration won't allow them to lathe through the tank over time. Good luck.

[charliekwin]

A little update on stitching, because posting about it is better than actually doing it.

Frankly, this seems like the part I'm most likely to screw up. I (wisely!) tried a few test runs with some scrap vinyl to get a feel for what I was doing. Getting straight, even stitches on the machine -- even doing them all by hand -- is hard. Some of the first tries were rough.

I have T90 thread that I used to start with, but it's not quite as thick as I'd like, so I bought some heavier 210 thread, which looks nice, but is too big for the sewing machine. You can see the size comparison as well as the best my mother in law's machine will do with it.

I'm on the fence now...I could use the 90 in the machine to run the stitches, then use the 210 as the interlocking thread (as pictured). That looks okay, but I'm worried about making them straight and even. I do think I might go with this particular diamond stitch, though (Google image search has done nothing but make me question my decision making on this particular element!)

Or I could buy a stitching awl and do it all by hand. I could use the heavy thread and presumably get nice stitches, but it would take almost forever.

[Captain Obvious]

"Or I could buy a stitching awl and do it all by hand."

I unfortunately believe this would yield the best results.

[charliekwin]

Arg, Cap, that's not what I want to hear! :-P

[dmorales-bello]

I concur with Capn' O and prefer hand stitching myself 

[charliekwin]

I bought a Speedy Stitcher on Amazon this morning. What's an extra hour or 4 in the long run anyway? I've wasted more time on less in my life!

What's your speciality, Dr. Dave?

[dmorales-bello]

1 hour ago, charliekwin said:

 

I bought a Speedy Stitcher on Amazon this morning. What's an extra hour or 4 in the long run anyway? I've wasted more time on less in my life!

What's your speciality, Dr. Dave?

 

I'm a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. It takes me 45 minutes just to suture each breast after a complete mammoplasty. Considering at that point that I've been working non-stop for 3 hours by the time I start to do the final stitching (we call it suturing just to be fancy), I wish I had a Speedy Stitcher from Amazon!

Edited May 25, 2017 by dmorales-bello

[siteunseen]

Cool job!

That's better than a vaginacologist.

[charliekwin]

It is a cool job! It's actually the exact job I had planned for myself when I was younger...until I got about halfway through my undergrad major courses (physiology) and suddenly realized I didn't have the passion for it that my fellow pre-med students did. I just stuck with technology and ended up in health care anyway.

[dmorales-bello]

Thanks guys. It is an amazing job and I think I was fortunate to pick the specialty that suited me best but medicine (if done correctly) is more a religion than a career, requiring all your effort with very little respite. I've been at it for 33 years though and I've put myself on a "pre-retirement protocol" .  I promised my kids I would retire by 60 which comes up in March of next year and I plan to honor my promise. I'm sure I'll miss surgery terribly and a lot of free time will be tough to manage but I'm sure working on my toys (cars, motorcycles, house, etc), maybe a new business venture, and spending time with the people I truly care for will take up a lot of it very pleasantly.