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Detailing your MR2 Restoring interior vinyl! [Archive] - Toyota MR2 Message Board

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Detailing your MR2 Restoring interior vinyl! [Archive] - Toyota MR2 Message Board Toyota MR2 Message Board > General and Racing Discussions > General Technical Discussion > Detailing your MR2 Restoring interior vinyl! PDA

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U-23502-15-2010, 05:46 AMNow with pictures! Links to pics are at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, I didn't see really anything on here about restoring your interior vinyl (door cards, center... console... Armrest... Thingy..., or the dash) as far as products, techniques, etc. so I thought I'd throw my 2c out there and hope it helps someone. :)

The product I used is a vinyl recoloring kit from Leather Magic (http://www.leathermagic.com/Pages/vinrecolrkit.htm). They have chips on their website, so you can order "Toyota Black" when you check out.

The kit consists of pigment, a compressed air sprayer, a cleaner/prep solution, vinyl dressing, latex gloves and a foam application brush.

Directions are straight-forward: clean articles with water and soap, rinse articles with clean water, dry, scrub in the Prep solution with cloth or paper towels (I used Tech Wipes, which are non-lint), dry, then shake dye and brush on using slow, even strokes to avoid streaking or bubbles.

While straight forward (and you can probably read that info from their website), I'd just like to share some of the techniques I used that gave me great results.

(1) Only pour a little pigment at a time- I was filling up the bottom of a plastic party cup with maybe 1/4in of dye at a time. This was so that the pigments wouldn't settle in a the cup and give spotty results. Also, it prevented me from laying it on thick and making bubbles; thin coats... Many, many, thin coats... Work best.

(2) If your brush starts leaving streaks, clean it with warm water and gently dry the brush with lint-free towels. Because if you ignore the streaks, soon you'll be depositing dried up pigment dust cluster thingies that will aggravate the piss out of you when you try to remove them from area you're working.

(3) If the dye starts to bead up, you need to stop what you're doing and use the Prep solution to finish cleaning up those areas. It's beading because detailing/protectants are still on the material.

(4) I'm not sure if it's year specific, trim specific, etc., but some MR2s don't have removable door card inserts. Mine had the fabric glued to the card. When wet, the dye will wash out easily with water or diluted alcohol so if you have that stuff handy right away, you can clean up anything making it past your mask pretty easily.

Or, you can do what I did- I had door card inserts from another car, so I used a razor blade to cut out my fabric and a 1/2in wood chisel to punch in some holes for the metal tabs on the card to latch through. I just set my cards on top of the newly bald spot, marked the tab locations with a grease pen, then as gently as I could I dug a corner of the chisel into the door card and rocked it back and forth until it punched through. All holes were clean, I didn't have any cracking or anything of that nature.

(5) If you can, remove your windshield. Up by the vents and behind the gauge cluster 'hump' were a true PITA.

(6) Clean as you go, keep clean, lint-free towels and water nearby. Because if this stuff hardens on you, you're effed.

(7) The dye takes 48 hours to completely cure from the last time you touched the brush to the part.


That's about it as far as the "learn as you go" part.

TAKE NOTE: I had to apply MANY coats on mine... The cards weren't bad. They needed between 2-5 coats in some places before the color was uniform and the vinyl stopped drinking. The dash, being huge and a PITA needed 8-12 coats in most places, but the side pieces (like left and right bottom of the steering wheel) only needed 3. My center console was the WORST. It needed 28 DAMN COATS OF DYE before the material was uniform and quit drinking it up.

This whole process was about 5.5 hours long. About a half hour was pre-cleaning, and the last 5 hours was nonstop mixing and brushing pigment, bouncing between parts so they could dry enough to review and reapply to the areas needing more work, or where I had to cover up brush streaks/fix pools. That 5.5 hours doesn't include removing the cards, center, dismantling the cards, etc.

I never once used the sprayer they included, but your results (and time) may vary if you used it. I didn't use the sprayer because (1) it wasn't needed and (2) I'm using a work facility and didn't want to mask off a huge area unless I had to.

I am thoroughly impressed with the quality and end result of this product. Everything is now a deep, shiny black like it came from the factory. I used probably about 3/4 of the dye with the basic kit I linked to, so the basic kit should be plenty for most of you out there.



CAVEAT: If you do not have patience or are not anal retentive in the least, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND YOU TAKE THIS ON, YOU WILL PROBABLY WRECK YOUR INTERIOR. This is all patience and finesse; I waited until I had a 3-day weekend for a reason.

ALSO: If you do wreck your interior, I'm not responsible. I'm just sharing what worked for me. :D

Again, I hope someone will find this useful- I didn't have even this much info before I started up.



PICTURES! Taken at 12.5Mp with a Samsung TL100 under fluorescent lighting, but Photobucket resized them.

Door card, 50% complete. (http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/acinouranium235/MR2%20stuff/SDC10258.jpg) You can compare the original shade to the new one.

Center piece, after 25 coats. (http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/acinouranium235/MR2%20stuff/SDC10260.jpg)

Driver side view. (http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/acinouranium235/MR2%20stuff/SDC10268.jpg) Note the color of the steering wheel compared to the dash. The wheel was not dyed, the dash was.

My mess of a car, lol. (http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/acinouranium235/MR2%20stuff/SDC10264.jpg)

Mostly finished door with new card insert installed. (http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/acinouranium235/MR2%20stuff/SDC10270.jpg)

Enjoy! U-23502-16-2010, 05:09 AMFirst post updated, now with pics! Thanks for reading! mr2918002-16-2010, 06:17 AMHow much did u spend just to do this project? mmarookiejoe02-16-2010, 09:24 AMVery nice job. I hope I never have to do this, but I am saving this thread just in case. curvesrgood02-16-2010, 11:31 AMI'm just wondering what would cause an interior to need this... I've restored MR2's that sat as long at 9 years exposed to the sun sitting in a cow pasture and after 10-15 coats of armorall (letting it soak in) everything softened back up and looked new. Took me an hour and a half but after that the dash was shiny, not as brittle, and honestly about like new, have pictures in my build thread to show the differance (more drastic differance than what I saw from these)... the interior is a different color of black now, it was just SOOO dry before. In fact people keep commenting on "how nice that interior is" now. When I tell them the car sat 9 years they usually don't believe me. Didn't even use a quarter bottle of armorall, so I was wondering what necessitates something like this. Arizona sun baking or something like that maybe?

I'm not knocking your project, just wondering why all the expense and hassle, cause it sounds like a pain and mine took maybe 2 hours and cost like 4 bucks and mine looks and feels like new now inside. U-23502-16-2010, 04:21 PMThanks for the replies!

The resto process cost I think $55 when you factor in shipping the kit I bought (and linked to).

@curvesrgood: I wish I knew what the deal was. The car was predominately a commuter in SoCal before I bought it and it has 220k on the clock- it spent I think 8 years just north of LA in that baking heat and dryness (just look at how baked my paint is).

I had previously tried to use every non-oily interior detailing product I could find on the interior and spent countless hours detailing it out- which helped, especially on the hard plastics- but it still looked tired and faded. Which itself wasn't too bad, but it was faded in like... Patches. So it just looked weird, and I could never get it all to blend in with detailing.



Lastly, I'd like to add that when I got the car out into natural light I noticed I missed some spots. So I'll be doing those throughout the week. Skittles04-22-2010, 11:50 PMThat looks amazing!

I have a question though: is this essentially a dye kit?

In other words, my 2 has that off blue interior, and instead of tracking down and buying an all black interior, I could use this kit to essentially convert it to black?

If so, you are my hero.

If not, your still a badass for putting this up.

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