Radio adjustment knobs gunked up?

[michail77]

I was cleaning the interior of my car today and noticed the adjustment dials (bass, treble, balance, fade, etc.) were kind of sticky and gunked up looking, especially the bass knob. I scraped off the bass knob and it's now nice and clean.

I'm not sure if this is some sort of factory coating to give the knob a soft grip or just dirt (doubtful). If it is factory it appears to have broken down and gotten kind of nasty.

 

[mkvgtiiiii]

it might be a matte clear coat that degraded because that is what happen to my mx helmet.

 

[cantona7]

No, I have the same crap. Most of the interior panels of our cars has this plastidip type of coat on. the door handles, the DSG shift base, and the radio buttons.

I stripped my door handles and repainted them. Do not try to sand them or use any heavy products to stripp or they will mess up the plastic, they are a PITA to stripp. Use denatured alcohol, dabb it on with a sponge and rubb it with sctoch brite or dishwashing pad. It gets it right off, takes a little bit of elbow grease. Then I sanded it a little with fine grit. I used 3 coats of Interior Panel Dash Paint (i think thats what its called) by Duplicolor. It's flat black color. I worked out great. After i painted it sanded it a little more with 1000 gritt, looked aweseme. No sticky rubberized crap, nice clean flat black.

hope this helps

 

[mikegabriel]

Don't pick your noise and turn up the bass.

 

[michail77]

Thanks for the info. So far the only parts that seemed gunked up were the little radio knobs. Whatever finish they put on seems to soften over time and gets sticky, thus attracting dirt/dust.

I think they actually look better after I stripped them.

 

[avenali312]

i'm assuming the radio knobs are black plastic then? you lucked out. my soft touch coating started lifting on the shifter panel and when i went to strip it off it was an ugly white color, so i ended up plasti-dipping it.

thread for reference: http://golfmkv.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2441257&postcount=30

 

[cantona7]

@avenali312, heh thats exactly what i just did. When I stripped it I was disgusted with the white plastic and though WTF. But, instead of using plastidip, I used this:
http://www.duplicolor.com/products/vinyl.html

I works great wonders. The problem I have with plastidip is that its the same rubbery stuff and will peal after a while. But the duplicolor is a lot more smoother and has that painted finish touch to it.

But both solutions work.

The problem with painting radio buttons is that how do you replicate the writing on the buttons? how do you write SAT or CD and still have the light shine through at night?

 

[CW MKV GTI]

Don't pick your noise and turn up the bass.

Damn. That's what my problem is...:biggrin:

 

[Turbo]

Do the bass, treble, balance, fade dials pull straight off? Has anyone actually removed them before? I was pulling pretty damned hard on the dials and they weren't budging. I didn't want to pull too hard and end up with a broken head unit. If there's no trick to removing them, I'll just pull harder.