More than once I've decided against a part or a modification because of price, but the price I was quoted by Dallas Steering Wheel to install a leather wrap on my steering wheel about put me into cardiac arrest! Their website ads show several European Super Cars, and I suppose I should have expected that those were the target customers for their products. Whatever, their prices are way out of my league.
The shock: They wanted $500 plus tax and shipping for two-tone leather and 1/8" padding. That's $475 more than what it cost for me to wrap the one on my truck. So, I decided to also do this one myself using a Wheel Skins single-color wrap over the 1/8" padding I had left over from when I installed the generic leather cover on my '73 D100. The high quality, custom made leather cover I'll use this time will be around $60 plus shipping. Not quite as pretty as the two-tone would have been, but for ten percent of the cost, it will do just fine!
I got started installing the padding yesterday, and the cover should be here in about a week.
The awe: I took the homemade horn bar parts to the plating shop in Gainesville, Texas yesterday. They quoted about $150 to plate the two parts, and a three-week wait, so I'll be getting back to wire routing for a while. Then, this morning they called and said they had squeezed them in between bigger jobs, and that I can pick them up this afternoon!
I'll go after them sometime tomorrow, and maybe I can have some pictures to post if I can get them mounted on the wheel.
The guy I dealt with at the chrome shop was interesting to visit with. He's eighty-one years old and works as a consultant two days a week after a lifelong career in the plating business. Four years older than me, and still working, while I've been retired for twenty-one years!
What made him interesting was his hobby as a top-fuel and funny car owner-driver for many years from the late fifties until the mid-eighties. It's interesting to hear the stories from the heyday of drag racing. He said he left when it was no longer a sport between friends.
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