Removing dirt and restoring your alcantara steering wheel to its former glory!

Nothing is like the feeling of fresh, crisp, fluffy alcantara in your hands when your car or steering wheel is brand new but fast forward a few months or years and you will find that the matte soft fibers of your alcantara steering wheel quickly become shiny, flat and look very worn out! Good news is that you shouldn’t be too concerned just yet! It may be reversible!

Over the years of detailing at Leading Edge detailing we have seen many cars come and go and many if not all had one thing in common, dirty steering wheels. Why always the steering wheel? Simple, we use it all the time! Oil and dirt from our hands, dead skin, make up and so many other factors make it very easy to quickly get that steering wheel dirty.

In this blog we talk about how to easily clean the dirt off your alcantara steering wheel at home with basic tools and products and keep that steering wheel looking fantastic.

If you like a good read please continue but if you are that visual kind of person then below is a video I made when I purchased an expensive alcantara steering wheel for my BMW M140i off eBay and it was simply too dirty for me to live with so I cleaned it up in the top secret method I will share with you in this blog!

Now that we know what makes or gives our alcantara steering wheels that flat shiny dirty look we can begin to address the problem by first making sure we have the required tools and products, like always we use and recommend the IGL range of products found at IGL Coatings Australia

What you need to clean your alcantara steering wheel:

• A stiff bristle plastic brush, think of the stiffness of a medium tooth brush (you can use a tooth brush but make sure it is a new one and don’t use it for brushing your teeth after!)
• IGL Pre-coat – this product is normally used to prepare paint/leather for ceramic coating and remove grease/wax but as it flashes off quickly and has been designed to remove wax/oil it works perfectly on alcantara and smells amazing.
• Clean microfiber cloths

Not a big list at all!

Method:

• Spray IGL Pre-coat on your steering wheel in 1 section at a time(tip: cover your dashboard and dash cluster etc… with microfiber cloths to avoid spraying pre-coat on them by accident)
• Using the brush and in quick motion before IGL Pre coat evaporates agitate gently and immediately wipe off using the microfiber cloth, the trick here is to do small areas by allowing the product to dissolve the dirt/oil/grease and wipe off quickly before the product evaporates.
• Continue around the steering wheel cleaning small sections at a time until it is all done
• Allow the alcantara to dry completely and if desired spray with IGL Fabric Coating to slow down future dirt build up and allow easier cleaning!

Nice and easy way to clean that alcantara which everyone is afraid to touch!

 
Thank you as always for following our blogs and please contact me at [email protected] for any feedback as well as subscribe to our YouTube channel!