How do I buff interior wood effect trim?

[Wizbit]

The wood (well fake wood anyway) trim inside my A8 has lots of fine marring on the surface of it, which when it sunlight really shows up.

I want to try and polish these out but is this a stupid thing to try? What would I use to do it as it is probably quite soft?

My product range is quite limited, but would AutoGlym super resin polish be ok, or would this just scratch it further?

[maersk]

SRP and a lot of elbow grease. The 'wood' is lacquered.

[steelwind101]

Its always tough, its probably plastic coated and IMO any thing to abrasives just makes a mess of it! Either SRP, but watch out for getting dust in the gaps in the interior! In order to remove the marring you would either have to level the paint/plastic/coating on the whole bit of trim or rub the scratches enough to take the edges off of them so they are not so catching in the sunlight.

Alot of the product you can buy as wood polish for cars are acutally just "cleaner waxes".

On the door rest of the Lancer there were alot of scratches, i presume from a watch of the previous owner. It cost me about £12 to replace and 10 mins work to fit....perfect!

Geoff

[AudiPartner]

Why has nobody said:

"You don't, you remove it!"

Why not take it out and prime it up then spray it body colour?

[SINGH]

The wood (well fake wood anyway) trim inside my A8 has lots of fine marring on the surface of it, which when it sunlight really shows up.

I want to try and polish these out but is this a stupid thing to try? What would I use to do it as it is probably quite soft?

My product range is quite limited, but would AutoGlym super resin polish be ok, or would this just scratch it further?

No A8 has fake wood! It's real along with the leather.

[steelwind101]

Nearly all wood in modern cars is coated with either clearcoat or plastic.

Audi and Lexus both use what im going to call "exposed surface wood" on the premium woods, this is not coated. The wood panels are made of 4 layers of wood, pushed together, back injected with plastic. If you have genuine exposed wood you can feel it, it will be dimpled, polyurethane (PU) coated wood is smooth.

Finally....! If you have black wood, i think Audi call it Piano (!?) this is 4 layers of plain grain wood, pressed, back plastic injected, painted black and coated with conventional paintwork clearcoat.

I dont know what you mean by "real leather" most cars have real leather underneath a layer of plastic coating. The pattern you see is often machined in after its been removed from the animal. Audi offer this as there standard leather, which one of 3 options i believe VAG provide.

The second is a high quality "aniline" which is is NOT coated, its rare to find in modern cars, not only that it has natural grain and texture, its not pressed or machined in post slaugther on a production line.

Thirdly they do an Aniline and suede mix, though i notice some special editions consist of suede sides and material seat surfaces.

What you pay for on the Audi in particular is....hide leather.

When an animal slaughter there is a lot of product that can be used for leather seating, but the hide, at the rear of animal is the best bit.

You can tell if you dont have hide leather, as in my Mitsubishi for an example the leather on the area where you put your ass is "bowed" or stretched and its raised slightly away from the seat backing. This typical of "belly leather", leather made using skin from the belly area. Its prone to stretching after its been put on the seats so it does not look as tight as you might expect from hide leather.

Time to replace the keyboard, hopefully that gives some help as to what you would be dealing with!

[Wizbit]

I'm glad the wood is real, it would have been a bit crap to have fake wood on an A8. It does look fake though IMO as its very shiny and plastic looking.