We bought an 07 Dodge Caliber in 08. When we first got it my daughter (OCD) went to detail the interior. She started to clean the silver center console, Stereo and HVAC area, and the silver paint in one area pulled away leaving small circles of dark gray plastic! When we bought the car, I noticed the same area/spots appeared to be some sort of detailing overspray barely visable but never thought cleaning it would effect the plastic like that.

So yesterday I was applying some alcohol (prep for a piece of velcro) to the top of the dash and also rubbed that silver console. It took all the silver OFF down to the white plastic!!!. I will have to pull the panel off and paint it now which is no biggie but jeesh when did alcohol ever remove the color from plastic .

So I see on my passenger side of my Crossfire (console adjacent to seat) there's a small black dot about the size of a pin head. I dont want to mess with it because Im not sure if our interiors are black painted plastic. It simply could be a small stain but Im not going to touch it until I can determine the properties of the plastic used in our cars...ANY HELP

 

If you are talking about the center console they are painted. Mine is peeling like crazy so I bought a new one.

 

The plastic is black on the silver console pieces. I sanded some down to do some painting and all are black. (on a side note if alcohol works It would have saved me like 10000 hours of poorly sanding that stuff)

 

Ouch....sorry man.

 

I used alcohol to strip my slk dash and console parts, which is pretty much the same as a xfire, down to the black plastic then re-dyed the parts with "forever Black" I got from "perfomance products" then used a dash kit. If the silver parts are white, then you could paint the parts that would show and the kit would cover the majority and then just dye the black parts. To do it right you have to disassemble the dash. then becareful not to over tighten the screws when putting her back together. I used alldata for instructions on taking her apart. alcohol acts as solvent.

 

Jeez, I wonder what my interior looks like, I've been drinking alcohol for years.

 

How much of your innards are plastic old man?

roadster with a stick

 

Oh Shiite, most of mine are stainless steel except for the 14" reinforced nylon tube running from one Iliac to the other. One of the stainles steel Chinese finger lock stents just broke in half after 5 years. Hope the other 4 are ok?

John P
FTroopChief

 

When you dyed it black, Was it close to the same color as the rest of the black plastics? I want to just make the dash black I dont care too much for the silver center console. I could always just paint it another color but if I could just strip it down and dye it to make it match I would prefer that.

 

god i wish our f*cken interiors were half as nice as they are in the slk. our entire interior has this whole econo feel to it. the passenger side wall on the left side started flaking off after i was trying to clean it.