Leather Airbag & Gloss black steering wheel emblem

Leather trimming airbag covers seems to have become a trend. Rightly so, it adds a touch of luxury in my opinion. There are quite a few Instagram sellers selling them. But I decided to make my own as I could not justify the cost of some of these.

Before I go on, some key safety issues and concerns need to be mentioned:

Trimming airbag covers is a controversial topic. Mainly because you are essentially adding an extra layer in the way that the airbag has to break-out of. Just because an airbag blows and splits the leather open, it doesn't mean it works properly. Sure, it's great that the airbag does that but, as with most things, timing is everything. Trimmers often make comments like don't worry, nothing can hold back that explosion or I've tested it myself on spare part and the leather splits up, no problem. Some will even show you video demos of a controlled airbag deployment which shows the airbag splitting. This misleads people into thinking that just because an airbag blows, it will work as designed by manufacturer.

The fact is, airbag charges are designed to coincide with the movement of a human body within a crash condition. The charge is timed so that the airbag is fully inflated at the very instant before a body comes in contact with it. Too early, and the bag vents out leaving less cushion for an impact; too late, and the body is already in its path and gets slammed with the full force of the explosion.

To illustrate the point about timing being everything, I've linked a video right at the end of this post to watch. It shows two scenarios of a watermelon dropping on an airbag. Firstly as it inflates on-time, and secondly when it's just seven hundredth of a second too late.
I did my airbag trimming keeping all this in mind and created cuts in the leather along the same breaking outline at the back. Ofcourse there is no guarantee that it will deploy 100% on-time, but I am confident I took extra steps to make sure it does deploy as on-time as possible.

Back to the topic of the mod itself. I've painted the emblem gloss black by stripping the chrome from a brand new emblem. Emblems must be replaced with new emblems because they have plastic pegs that go through little holes on the airbag cover. The pegs then need to be melted down from inside. This is to prevent the emblem coming loose when airbag deploys. Hence why the old emblem is not re-usable.

Below are some photos finished results along with some photos of the project