I had the usual wear around the controls of my MFSW so had been considering doing a diy refurb on them for months...
I’d read all the previous posts on here and wasn’t much looking forward to removing the rubberised oem coating and then getting a good key to the plastic when repainting.
Then some very rare BMW Individual trims came up on Ebay (which may actually have been the same ones that came up for sale on here a few months agi, but i wasn’t quick enough) so I snapped them up.
They were listed as brand new but when they arrived the clips were broken so had obviously been fitted previously, so i negotiated a discount and went about fitting them.
These being silver, what i didn’t quite realise is that you don’t get the switch trims included as these are not separate to the switch electronics, so i had to reuse my existing switches. This did mean that I had to find a way to remove the dreaded coating and paint the switch trims.
After lots of experimentation of using different chemicals like IPA, white spirit, petrol, acetone, I finally tried autoglym tar remover. This seemed the best of the bunch by quite a margin. Basically the rubber coating just rubs off after soaking in the tar remover for about 30 mins or so. What you are then left with is a fairly matt black plastic finish that doesn’t need any further painting.
Refiting everything was simple enough and the broken clips don’t really seem to matter at all, but it took me a while to get used to the new colours....especially the silver trim with the black switches. Now i have got used to it i think it looks ok, as it does match the door pulls well. Certainly better than the old worn look of the previous. What do you think?
I’d read all the previous posts on here and wasn’t much looking forward to removing the rubberised oem coating and then getting a good key to the plastic when repainting.
Then some very rare BMW Individual trims came up on Ebay (which may actually have been the same ones that came up for sale on here a few months agi, but i wasn’t quick enough) so I snapped them up.
They were listed as brand new but when they arrived the clips were broken so had obviously been fitted previously, so i negotiated a discount and went about fitting them.
These being silver, what i didn’t quite realise is that you don’t get the switch trims included as these are not separate to the switch electronics, so i had to reuse my existing switches. This did mean that I had to find a way to remove the dreaded coating and paint the switch trims.
After lots of experimentation of using different chemicals like IPA, white spirit, petrol, acetone, I finally tried autoglym tar remover. This seemed the best of the bunch by quite a margin. Basically the rubber coating just rubs off after soaking in the tar remover for about 30 mins or so. What you are then left with is a fairly matt black plastic finish that doesn’t need any further painting.
Refiting everything was simple enough and the broken clips don’t really seem to matter at all, but it took me a while to get used to the new colours....especially the silver trim with the black switches. Now i have got used to it i think it looks ok, as it does match the door pulls well. Certainly better than the old worn look of the previous. What do you think?
