Any suggestions for scratched interior rubber pieces?

[Oughourj]

Hi guys,

Annoyingly my 1'er has developed some scratches on the nav unit which are directly in view from the driver's seat. I believe they are mostly from fingernails and that material seems to be really sensitive to any contact when it's warmed up under the sun.

Any suggestions for re-finishing that particular material which is some sort of soft touch rubber, or perhaps touching up the scratches so they're not as pronounced?

Here's what it looks like:



It's driving me insane especially considering how immaculate I've managed to keep the rest of my interior..

Thanks for the help

[muddtt]

Other people plasti dip or do some carbon fiber wrap on their trim pieces when they degrade. They usually turn out looking pretty good.

[6MT_Addict]

I used to work at a shop putting in starters, decks, amps etc when I was in school. If someone damaged a customers panel and we got a complaint, they would bring in a guy to fix them. He primarily used a heat gun to gently melt the surface of the plastic.

I would take a look on youtube, there is probably something kicking around out there

[Oughourj]

I'm gonna remove the whole thing this weekend and first try out the heat gun method, prefer to do something like that before sanding it all down and applying plasti-dip. Will report back to you guys, thanks for the suggestions!

[Yeineken]

I would look into maybe wrapping it with a material that would cut down on light sheen so it could be easier to see the screen on a bright day.

Just a idea.

[Pissoff]

I agree, wrapping your trim would look best. There are threads on here from people who have wrapped there trim. Lots of choices in what you can wrap them in. Vinyl wrap of almost any color design you can think of. alcantara leather of all different colors. I would be afraid of trying the heat gun myself. Warp it just a little, and you could have a gap, rattle, or just not fit.

[Esteban]

The heat gun is a good idea but it would probably be better if you had a professional do it, like 1AddictsAnonymous said.

I had a dealer scratch up my dash pretty bad some years ago on another car I had and they brought in a specialist to fix it up and he used a heat gun and when he was done it looked as good as new.

[ShocknAwe]

My cupholder area looks just like that now. That soft touch finish is scratching off everywhere. Looks awful.

[FactorX81]

A couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon fully peeling my cup holder area because it looked so bad. Sadly I barely even drink in my car but I put my keys, glasses, etc in there. Thankfully I have a black interior and the plastic underneath is black so it doesn't stand out to much.

[Oughourj]

Update:

I first removed the trim piece surrounding the nav controller and did a few trial runs on that to see what worked best. Here's how that came out:

Sanded down and ready for paint:



Two coats of Rust-Oleum Flexidip Black, next to the nav rear trim piece to compare to OEM:



I also noticed that HUGE scratch when I removed the nav unit, no idea how that happened!! As you can see the results were pretty close to OEM so I decided to go ahead and do the same procedure for the nav trims.

Both nav trim pieces after hours of blood, sweat, tears and a bit of cursing:



In the car:



It's not perfect, but definitely better than it was before and it was bound to get worse.

So for you guys who want to attempt this, just to give you an idea what I did:

First thing, I scraped off the nasty OEM rubber stuff with a wire brush (preferably one with a handle). I found that lacquer thinner works wonders removing this stuff, also for removing the flexidip if you make a mistake. Trust me that stuff doesn't peel off as easily as you might think.

Next I sanded everything down; ideally you want to start with 200-600 grit and work up to 1000/1500 grit. The more you sand the better your results will be.

For the paint, I opted with flexidip but I imagine plastidip works the same. To get the outcome as close to oem as possible, I went with two really thick coats. I found that thinner coats and more coats resulted in texturing. Also spraying up-close gave better results.

Make sure you wear a respirator and are in a well ventilated area when spraying (also when using the lacquer thinner, that stuff can't be good for you!).

As far as cost, I estimate total spent under $30 though I could have gone cheaper. I got most of the stuff from home depot but later realized walmart had everything and more (finer grit sandpaper which I couldn't find at home depot) for cheaper.

Anyway it was a lot of work but well worth it in the end.

[muddtt]

wow. looks really good.

[tracer bullet]

Thanks for the follow up, appreciated!