Adding more leather and alcantara inside.

[HPsauce]

Sadly my "new" (green) S8 has been subject to aggressive cleaning that has made the alcantara on the door panels all furry (and worse).
I knew this when I bought it by the way, factored into the price.

So I'm finally getting round to thinking of paying a trimmer to replace/recover the (8) offending areas.
Then I started thinking about covering up some of the plastics with leather or alcantara. That's mostly the dashboard and top of the doors though I'm sure there are other bits if I look.

My interior is the Twist beige (WJ, Papyrus combo) Thoughts anyone, what and where?
Funds are not unlimited, but.....

[Architex_mA8tey]

When I had my sunroof liner re-trimmed in alcantara to match the rest, I used a traditional car trimmer who turned out to be both helpful and in my opinion reasonable price wise. He is based in Calne, Wiltshire on the portmarsh industrial estate and his details are here:
http://www.swautotrimming.co.uk/index.html

[notorious]

My advice would be not to cover door cards completely with leather. If you do, make sure leather don't go beyond rubber door seal.

If leather wraps door card completely then you will have a strip of leather outside door rubber seal, effectively exposed to street conditions. This means that after one winter that leather will become mouldy. That mould will be impossible to remove.

Audi have a technical note in ELSA that full leather door cards are not repairable because of mould and should be replaced. They specifically made a batch of door cards that have plastic strip in circumference beyond the rubber seal and then leather inside the car. If ordered new those door cards are prohibitively expensive (£5500 for a set of 4 without VAT).

[HPsauce]

Yes, I'm very familiar with the mould issue from my old PF S8.
The FL I now have seems to have a different material going round into the door shuts, I wasn't planning to touch that as it's colour-matched and not on show with the doors closed.

But the darker plastic strip along the top of the door is very obviously plastic, as is the upper dashboard etc.

[HPsauce]

After some advice yesterday at AITP to try a fabric "de-bobbler" on my damaged alcantara I had a go yesterday and this morning, plus did a bit of research.

A de-bobbler didn't really do much as the fibres of alcantara are so strong and interwoven that removing a bobble tended to pull up another tuft.
Some online research suggested that shaving it carefully with a new blade works well, but the multi-blades I had available did little.

Then I thought about an electric razor, the sort with slots (e.g. Philishave) reasoning that the remaining tufts would generally get into the slots and "should" be sliced off reasonably neatly.
And that indeed is the case, though it's an extremely slow process.

The picture attached is of my front passenger door. The really bad "furry area" originally was even worse and extended in a strip all the way across from left to right.
First I de-bobbled it, which didn't really do much at all.
Then I worked away at the centre of the bad strip with a small Philips rotary shaver for several minutes. It really is a lot better as hopefully you can see in the picture.
I don't think the end result will ever look "as new" but hopefully will be less jarring on the eye, but it will take time!

[Architex_mA8tey]

That's considerably better than it was Andrew! How new are the Phillips blades? Maybe if you get the worst off with the current blades then put some fresh ones in it may get it looking even better

[HPsauce]

Originally Posted by Architex_mA8tey

That's considerably better than it was Andrew! How new are the Phillips blades?

The blades are fine and self-sharpening, the problem is that the bits clog them up (don't pass through like hair trimmings) so it needs dismantling and cleaning every few minutes.
After a few more minutes it looks like this, only the small rectangle top left has been left for contrast.

[David's8]

That looks a lot better. Good effort. (perhaps you could have tried waxing - the ladies swear by it! )

[HPsauce]

Originally Posted by David's8

perhaps you could have tried waxing

Don't get me started on that subject!
Anyway, whilst not finished this is the result close-up after going over all of it. Needs a final trim but actually looks pretty good from normal viewing angles, though I say it myself.
That was the second worst door, the drivers needs rather more attention and the back ones are nothing like as bad.
After and before(ish) pics:

[Adrian E]

That's a fantastic result for more or less no cost apart from your time