Re: Body and interior tips[long] (archive)

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Then follow up with a wax. This brings the paint back, if you had enough to start with, to a great shine. Keep it washed and waxed. Touch up any heavy enviroment damage like bird droppings, Train dust/rust spots if you live near electric mass transit, very quickly. These tend to damage the paint or stick in fairly easily.

As for the interior, you need to procede with slow care, just like on the outside. Older leather can be brought back to life, I use 2 products depending on peoples needs. Fast, but thin coverage comes from a product like Lexol, it's liquid, not a creme. Seems to work fairly well, and they make both a cleaner and a protection liquid.

For a longer lasting, or more serious approach, I've had great success with Connolly Leather Hide Food,comes from the UK, is a paste type leather treatment. You need more time to let it set in, it can work well, but try it in an unseen place on the seats first, I've had it leave a white residue for awhile with people who had silicone products applied to the leather. Seems like the Connolly had a hard time seeping into the leather with a layer of silicone treatment already on.
Don't know for sure on that.

You may also need to put a towel on the seats to sit on after applying it . It can take a few days to dry out enough. 2 treatments of the Connolly a year will generally do a BMW a lot of good. Esp. the rear upper seat sections that might get more sun like the headrests, if you still have them installed.

Carpet is a matter of choice, any water based or liquid product should really be extracted from the carpet once used to promote full drying of the carpet,also to help with drying during winter months since any residue left behind from the cleaner can slow the release of water from the carpet. I usually have better luck with a foam product.

For plastic, I've seen several things used, a few do bad long term damage to the plastic interior parts, like turn it brittle. Avoid silicone heavy stuff if you can avoid it, seems to only create new problems. I've had pretty good luck with a Wurth Product called "Cockpit Cleaner", they claim it's silicone free. Leaves a fairly high gloss shine on the parts, so this may not be your cup of tea. Also, it may contribute to the fogging of the inside of the front windshield from the outgassing of the product if it's used on the dashboard alot. It seems to leave a residue on a few cars, mostly related to heat from what I could tell. But, it did seem to repell the dirt like Wurth claims, supposed to have an "anti-static" feature to the spray.

It does impart a great cleaning and shining effect to all the buttons and white lettering on the various switches like BMW used, without rubbing or taking the finish/paint off, no matter how often I've used it on a car. Makes the OBC and steering column switches look like new, so I've kept using it all these years.
Otherwise, you could use a mild soap and water, then try whatever you have locally to impart the level of shine on these parts. Use a sponge to clean all the gunk off the parts, amazing how it builds up with time.

Door seals, most people use straight silicone spray for them, I use either Wurth or Winzer non-silicone seal treatment spray. Using a non-silicone spray makes it easier to repaint around any where you might need to in the future. I've listened to body shop people go on for hours about the contaimination they encounter when they try to repaint around wheel well openings or if alot of rubber trim treatment was used around all the black rubber/plastic trim on a highline car.
Fish eye is not easy to deal with when it's waiting for the body shop in the paint from all those details the car got previously.
Silicone is in almost every car body product that is supposed to make something shine on the car, so it's hard to avoid. You just try to limit the exposure as you go along. Your local body shop will thank you someday, trust me.

As for that rubber trim, lots of treatments claim to limit UV damage with regular use, don't know for sure about that, but using something that slows it down will help.
I've used several creams, probably loaded with silicone too! You can play around to get the level of sheen/shine, some are a higher gloss than others, and you may only want a satin look like when the car was new.
The flat black paint in some areas will benefit from the same stuff.

Hope this helps, when I sold my '85 Seven, it was a mirror finish and the interior was soft, supple and clean too. Lots of hard work, but if the previous owner left you anything to work with, it's worth the effort, as no other Models during the early '80s got the wood as nice and comfort like the Sevens did. I don't think the Six Series ever looked as good, but I was biased to the Sevens anyway!

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