Montego Blue E86 is Long Gone - Z4MC Diff Rebuild

[Tommo61]

Great thread! What products did you use on the seats to clean and repair the cracking?

[lucasxdiniz]

Great thread! What products did you use on the seats to clean and repair the cracking?

To clean:

AutoGlym's Interior Shampoo
Leather Brush
Drill attachment

Restoration:

I chose a furniture clinic kit with colour matched dye
This leather preserver after cleaning and restoring the leather

[Tommo61]

Great thread! What products did you use on the seats to clean and repair the cracking?

To clean:

AutoGlym's Interior Shampoo
Leather Brush
Drill attachment

Restoration:

I chose a furniture clinic kit with colour matched dye
This leather preserver after cleaning and restoring the leather

Thanks, will give it a go!

[lucasxdiniz]

Thanks, will give it a go!

Good luck! Post the results.

[Stretch_Blanco]

Then the steering wheel... I spent a weekend refurb'ing the steering wheel trim and the following Monday drove (trimless) to Royal Steering Wheel to get put the newly refurb'ed trim into a newly re-trimmed steering wheel.

Final result (bad photo):


Interior with new centre console trim, refurbed steering wheel and a custom shortened gaiter to match the steering wheel (i.e champagne stitching):





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What a fantastic idea! I never even thought of that. My wheel is totally wrecked and I thought I was going to have to buy a whole new wheel! Not anymore, that looks amazing!

Steering wheel.jpeg (126.49 KiB) Viewed 2322 times

Steering wheel3.jpeg (101.52 KiB) Viewed 2322 times

Steering wheel1.jpeg (108.65 KiB) Viewed 2322 times

Just bought last week and was actually thinking about creating a thread just like you have done here! Great job, what an amazing Z4!

[Stretch_Blanco]

No, I didn't find it difficult, it was just very time consuming. I started cleaning at 6:30pm Tue and finished at 4am Wed. I did clean the interior and other bits between each dye application (15min between each application) - the driver's seat probably took around 10 applications or so to look perfect.
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What dye did you use?

[Z4C_er]

The wheel looks awesome. Very classy. And the gaiter! Did Royal do that as well?

[dhobbs]

How did you clean the inside of the headlights?
I assume they were left on the car. What did you have to remove to get inside them.

Car looks great by the way.

[lucasxdiniz]

What a fantastic idea! I never even thought of that. My wheel is totally wrecked and I thought I was going to have to buy a whole new wheel! Not anymore, that looks amazing!

Just bought last week and was actually thinking about creating a thread just like you have done here! Great job, what an amazing Z4!

Oh deary me that steering wheel has got to be the worse one I've ever seen. Hopefully you've at least deep cleaned it for now! Please do post the results once you refurb it.

What dye did you use?

Furniture clinic colour matched restoration kit.

The wheel looks awesome. Very classy. And the gaiter! Did Royal do that as well?

No, Royals charge way too much for a gaiter - £60 or so. There's a company on ebay J-F-Customs that I've used a few times and never disappointed me. I saw they had prepared gaiters with contrast stitching for the Z4 already (here), so I messaged them and asked for the stitching to be in cream and to make the gaiter shorter by 1", I was charged £5 extra and a few days later I was very pleased with what I received. So overall £25 and that includes the handbrake sleeve as well (yet to install that one...)

[lucasxdiniz]

How did you clean the inside of the headlights?
I assume they were left on the car. What did you have to remove to get inside them.

Car looks great by the way.

I removed the projector from the headlight housing to change it to a Morimoto unit and through the opening I managed to clean some of the inside of the headlight. I'm not happy with it still, so over summer I'll split them to clean everything properly and paint it black.

[Z4C_er]

No, Royals charge way too much for a gaiter - £60 or so. There's a company on ebay J-F-Customs that I've used a few times and never disappointed me. I saw they had prepared gaiters with contrast stitching for the Z4 already (here), so I messaged them and asked for the stitching to be in cream and to make the gaiter shorter by 1", I was charged £5 extra and a few days later I was very pleased with what I received. So overall £25 and that includes the handbrake sleeve as well (yet to install that one...)

Nice. I guess the 'cream' stitching fairly closely matches the steering wheel? Not that you could ever directly compare the two, as they will never be next to each other.

Thanks for the link.

[lucasxdiniz]

Nice. I guess the 'cream' stitching fairly closely matches the steering wheel? Not that you could ever directly compare the two, as they will never be next to each other.
Thanks for the link.

I keep saying cream, but it's 'champagne'. I could actually compare both side by side before I installed the gaiter, perfect match, so I guess they used the same thread/supplier. Quite close to the actual colour of the seats as well, but not perfect if you compare it against the seats, but once installed I can't tell the difference.

[dhobbs]

How did you clean the inside of the headlights?
I assume they were left on the car. What did you have to remove to get inside them.

Car looks great by the way.

I removed the projector from the headlight housing to change it to a Morimoto unit and through the opening I managed to clean some of the inside of the headlight. I'm not happy with it still, so over summer I'll split them to clean everything properly and paint it black.

Thanks. Mine definitely need a good wipe on the inside. My other half’s car has got a cobweb inside her headlight, no sign of the spider though

[dougie1142]

This is a great thread and really motivating to sort out the little details.

Sub'd!

[PaulHR]

Great thread, I now feeling the need to do more restoration to my coupe.