Vinyl-wrapping trim and repairing the centre vents on my Ford Focus LW

I picked up a set of exactly the same seats for only A$50. My driver's seat has a hole in the fabric and I really only wanted the one seat but the new set is a bit cleaner than mine so I will swap over them all.



I also had a go at vinyl wrapping some of my interior pieces.

The first piece did not go very well and looks pretty bad. After that experience I actually watched a YouTube video on wrapping interior parts and saw all the things I did wrong.

To remove the old finish on the trim pieces I heated a small area up a lot and then I could use a plastic razor blade to scrape off the old finish. The parts of my trim where the finish had disintegrated were no longer smooth so I used 1200 grit sandpaper to flatten and then 2000 grit to smooth the plastic.









Even after the YouTube training, the second piece did not turn out much better. Maybe it looks better than it was but I'm going to look for some new interior pieces instead of wrapping any more -- wrapping is too hard for me. I can at least advise that the metallic silver trim wrap commonly available on Aliexpress is similar to the Ford colour, but will not pass for the same colour.



While the radio was out I discovered why my centre vents were not working properly. The little plastic pieces that move when the controls are turned were broken and not actually opening and closing the vents. I searched online but could not find a source of replacements so I looked at what I could do to fix this.



I ended up cutting off the little plastic pieces that clip onto the ball. I then drilled a 4 mm hole through the plastic part and amazingly this can now be pushed onto the ball and it stays there and the vents work well now. They probably don't quite turn as far as they did, but they work well.