johncaul
New Member
- Messages
- 19
Hi all, I've had my GS for about 6 months. I love the interior- all black leather it goes particularly well with the carbon trim I think. Anyway, 1 thing (or 4 things to be completely accurate) completely spoil the high quality ambience. I'm talking about the rubberized window, sport and MSP switches in the middle of the dashboard. It seems to be a common gripe on a lot of forums that the switches deteriorate. With mine the rubberized coating had started peeling off and got sticky to touch, the window switches were particularly bad. I looked into buying replacement switches, but it seems only the centre console as a whole can be replaced for something like £400 including VAT and delivery.
I then saw a post by Abyss on this forum where he outlined how to remove of the console and clean up the buttons. I've just done something similar and the results are well worth the effort. It took about 1.5 hours with an overnight cure time being required for the buttons. Apologies but I didn't take before shots, but I do have some afters. If anyone's got the same problem the steps required are as follows.
1. Unscrew the 4 allen keys on the front of the consul
2. CAREFULLY (you don't want to damage the leather surround) insert a slim flat head screwdriver between the consul and surrounding leather trim. There are no clips etc. holding it, it's just heavy and difficult to get purchase on without jacking up.
3. Pull the consul out and make a note of which connectors go where on the back. Unclip the connectors. Make a note of which front button goes where.
4. Unscrew the 9 silver screws at the back. They're all identical so need to note what goes where.
5. Unclip the silver surrounds on each of the buttons. This a good chance to clean them with isopropyl alcohol. The 4 centre buttons have unique silver surrounds. You'll see which goes where from the long pins on the back- each will only go in a specific position. You'll see what I mean when you do it!
6. You can now unclip the window rocker switches from their housings, again carefully slide a slim flat head down the side of the rocker, it should pop out. I then used coarse grade (2000) wet and dry paper to carefully remove the remnants of the rubberised coating. Be carful, you don't want to go all the way through to the plastic underneath, nor do you want to take off the letters/ icons. Then getting as close to the icons as you can use a permanent black felt tip too even up the colouring. Again be careful to not spoil the icons. Don't worry too much about the shiny finish you'll get, the next step will even everything up.
7. You now need to spray with Tamiya TS 80. It's about 6 quid a can and will give a nice clear matt finish. It dries quickly, the key here is to do lots of thin coats. Over the course of an evening I probably did 10. Leave to cure completely overnight.
8. The results are below (unfortunately on blackberry so not great quality):
Switch unclipped and sprayed:
ready for re-assembly- see how the rubberized switches are now evenly coloured. They have also lost their "sticky" feel
finally the re-assembled consul. Looks as good as new!
Cheers all!
John
I then saw a post by Abyss on this forum where he outlined how to remove of the console and clean up the buttons. I've just done something similar and the results are well worth the effort. It took about 1.5 hours with an overnight cure time being required for the buttons. Apologies but I didn't take before shots, but I do have some afters. If anyone's got the same problem the steps required are as follows.
1. Unscrew the 4 allen keys on the front of the consul
2. CAREFULLY (you don't want to damage the leather surround) insert a slim flat head screwdriver between the consul and surrounding leather trim. There are no clips etc. holding it, it's just heavy and difficult to get purchase on without jacking up.
3. Pull the consul out and make a note of which connectors go where on the back. Unclip the connectors. Make a note of which front button goes where.
4. Unscrew the 9 silver screws at the back. They're all identical so need to note what goes where.
5. Unclip the silver surrounds on each of the buttons. This a good chance to clean them with isopropyl alcohol. The 4 centre buttons have unique silver surrounds. You'll see which goes where from the long pins on the back- each will only go in a specific position. You'll see what I mean when you do it!
6. You can now unclip the window rocker switches from their housings, again carefully slide a slim flat head down the side of the rocker, it should pop out. I then used coarse grade (2000) wet and dry paper to carefully remove the remnants of the rubberised coating. Be carful, you don't want to go all the way through to the plastic underneath, nor do you want to take off the letters/ icons. Then getting as close to the icons as you can use a permanent black felt tip too even up the colouring. Again be careful to not spoil the icons. Don't worry too much about the shiny finish you'll get, the next step will even everything up.
7. You now need to spray with Tamiya TS 80. It's about 6 quid a can and will give a nice clear matt finish. It dries quickly, the key here is to do lots of thin coats. Over the course of an evening I probably did 10. Leave to cure completely overnight.
8. The results are below (unfortunately on blackberry so not great quality):
Switch unclipped and sprayed:
ready for re-assembly- see how the rubberized switches are now evenly coloured. They have also lost their "sticky" feel
finally the re-assembled consul. Looks as good as new!
Cheers all!
John