How to safely clean 6n2 GTI Steering Wheel Stitching

[Verity]

Hi,
the rad stitching on my GTI steering wheel is basically black.
I really want to clean it up and make it look red again
but i dunno the best way of going about this.
i dont want to scrub at the stitching and make it look tatty
and i dont know what chemicals to use as i dont want to ruin the leather
its really sunk in there. i mean you can barely tell its red. the stitchings just never been cleaned in its 9 years of life

any suggestions? can any house hold objects be used? cose i dont want to buy anything for something so small. as im trying my hardest to save every penny i have atm.

cheers in advance guys

[6N2 GTI 00]

Just to confirm it actually is red? mine has black stitching as standard.

The best way probably would probably be with a very fine/soft tooth brush and gently go over it.
Not sure which cleaning agent would be best though, I guess a water based leather care product would be ideal.

[Verity]

yeah deff red towards the top (i guess its where hands dont go so much) is a dark red, and if u look really really really close u can still see red. but looking at it normally it just looks black and grubby bahh!
i think i have a soft toothbrush somewhere. ill give it ago.

do u recon a rabric cleaner would work? sound silly but thread is a fabric...srt of...you know what i mean :S

[6N2 GTI 00]

yeah deff red towards the top (i guess its where hands dont go so much) is a dark red, and if u look really really really close u can still see red. but looking at it normally it just looks black and grubby bahh!
i think i have a soft toothbrush somewhere. ill give it ago.

do u recon a rabric cleaner would work? sound silly but thread is a fabric...srt of...you know what i mean :S

Certainly worth a try with Fabric cleaner, just make sure its leather freindly I guess.
It will probably clean up fairly easily just one of those tricky places that require time & patience.

Hope it goes well anyway dude, let us know how you get on

[Bradley]

There is a chap in the GTI sectioon that recently did the same thing.He used this compound to clean it up and it seemed to work very well.

http://www.capstonecare.co.uk/shop_fila_ps87.htm

He seemed to have a smaller container but still any decent gegreaser should get most of it off.

[Verity]

hey guys. so my car got broken into in the early hours of friday. so on Sat while my boyfriend popped into work for a few hours i scrubbed down my dash board (to get the little pikeys hands off my car) with hot soapy water and decided to clean my steering wheel at the same time



was much dirtier then i first thought




once the thread had dried it attually came out quite nice so im happy

[6N2 GTI 00]

Nice Work looks much better now, like you said it did look black before the clean

[nigelelliott394]

Looks like a good job better results than my own I think.

I was the aforementioned chap who used PS/87 I'll maybe work it in a bit more next time and see how it turns out

[Verity]

Lol i thought yours came out better!!
Im gonna give mine another cleaning as well i think.
the water came out filthy the first time i did it so i would be interested to see how it came out if i did it again