(First posted on MX5 nutz forum in May 2015)

Something that really needed doing was a serious clean of the interior.  It was pretty grubby, especially the leather so I got to work on it.

The ‘walnut’ trim on the centre console had obviously been removed some time ago but the glue had not so it looked like this.  Also the air vents had been replaced with some wheels from an RC car which looked a bit crap. Fortunately the previous owner had already bought some proper air vents so I just had to swap them.

more sticky stuff that needed removing

cleaning tools

one cleaned

cleaned to reveal the white stripes on the knobs.

dirt in the grain

grubbyness all removed

super resin polish to remove the glue

all gone and new vents in 🙂

found a quid. cashback!

next on to the seats.  They were really bad.  I thought they were just very dirty but it seems they have been ‘restored’ with some colour in the past and that had discoloured or collected dirt over the years.  So instead of this being a fairly simple removal of dirt it was a bit more work than that as I was removing the, now grey/brown, colour to eventually reveal the original leather colour.

grey/brown colour

partly cleaned areas to check what i was doing was working

passenger seat done, drivers next

 

this took forever!

door cards were just as bad

before

after

belts too

spare wheel cable tied in so it was rattling around and a wire coat hanger as a radio aerial. also a free hat, ratchet and cable ties.

had a good nose around for any rust

gave it a bit of a clean

bit of surface rust under the battery so thought I may as well sort that and stick some pads under the battery to stop the paint wearing off again.

all back together with the wheel bolted in properly now.

lastly I pulled the dials out to replace one of the backlight bulbs and moved some non standard wiring for the horn.

so that’s a few more jobs done.  still not too exciting but the interior is a much nicer place to be now.