Console Restore - '01 BMW

courtdale

courtdale

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Not sure if this leaves the technical realm of "detailing", but thought I'd throw it up. Many BMW's have a lower center console with a very soft and easily damaged paint. This car looked as if someone had abused it with a wire brush, butcher knife, and then stuck their half eaten Jolly Rancher to it... no idea. The rest of the interior was in relatively good shape, so something had to be done. Here is what it looked like:

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Removed it, cleaned it (took A LOT of work to deal with the Jolly Rancher type thing), then sanded with 2 different grits. After clean/sand:

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Following the sand, I taped off the chrome tabs, and gave it 3 coats (Black Plasti-dip, a near perfect match to factory). And here was the final product, I was very pleased:

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Wow - that turned out great! What grit sand paper did you use?
 
Great Job!!! Looks GREAT!!!

I have done a few like this... Always a pain but honestly for not too much work it tends to be favorable for the customer... I love Plasti Dip! It works great for shadowlining Bimmers too and is fully reversible without any adverse effects!!!!
 
Awesome results. Great info for any of my future clients. :xyxthumbs:
 
Thanks all. Really enjoyed this one, especially considering repainting anything on a car tyipcally scares the heck out of me. Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with my exterior B pillars.
 
nice work, that plasti-dip looks like some cool stuff. How thick is it?
 
It's thick, I probably could have gotten away with two coats. Con is that its soft, like the original BMW paint, basically a rubberized coating. I've beenbabying it since, so I can't speak to how well it will hold up to any type of abuse.
 
Huge improvement!

And we all know that a person's eyes are always drawn to the one spot on a car that doesn't look as nice as the rest. Definitely worth doing. And not something that is expected.:xyxthumbs:
 
Hmmm. A detailer sanding. Who would have thought.
Excellent job! Looks good as new.
 
gofast908z said:
Very nice!

How easy was it to remove?
Click to expand...

Removal of the original material wasn't bad. I was cleaning as I sanded with alcohol wipes and the alcohol seemed to be removing a lot of the material on its own. I also was able to peel/scrape a good bit off with a flathead after the covering was softened.

Probably could have saved a lot of sand time by using the above and moving right on to the finer grit sand.

One thing I haven't had to do with Plastidip is remove it, but I hear it's one if it's perks. If there are ever any issues with the job, it peels off easily.

I think the grills are next. I've seen quite a few before/afters and I'm looking to ditch the chromes for a matte black. Monday project me thinks :).
 
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