The steering wheel in my 2006 is pretty shiny. I did some Googling and found a bunch of people claiming that lightly scrubbing the wheel with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser fully restored the matte finish of the leather from the factory. Can anyone here corroborate that? Personal experience and/or words of caution?

 

yes magic eraser will work to clean off and restore factory finish to leather in general but scrub lightly because it can go to far and mess it up. I work at a carwash and we magic erase leather seats all the time. Its pretty easy just make sure to keep the magic eraser wet to the dripping point otherwise it wont work well

 

^^ Thanks for the tip. I printed your reply and put it into my 350z notebook.

--Spike

 

Thanks for the feedback. I did some more reading today and also found that it's critical to rub lightly to avoid damaging the leather. My question is: what's "light" rubbing? Should I just graze the magic eraser across the leather sort of under its own weight, or should I be putting some pressure on it?

 

Hit the bottom of the wheel and see what "light" means. That way if you go to "light" then you know and nobody will see the spot?

That magic eraser is good for everything!!

Chris

 

No joke, I cleaned my boat with magic erasers using Ztuff cleaner as a sort of wetsand-but-not-really. The boat had sat under a tree for 3 years before i bought it. Whitened it up nice. actual wetsanding and gelcoat restoration made it look new.

 

I tried the Magic Eraser on the Z steering wheel yesterday. I didn't use any soap but I soaked the M.E. in warm water and wrung it out slightly before applying it. I went over the wheel surface with light-to-medium pressure, making sure that the M.E. was always damp-to-wet. I didn't scrub but I rubbed it back and forth. It took away some of the shininess but didn't restore the wheel to a matte finish...however, I don't recall whether the Z wheel leather even had a nice matte finish when it was brand new...does anyone here remember?

Aesthetics aside, cleaning the wheel did take away some of the slipperiness and I felt that the leather had a higher friction coefficient this morning on my drive into work, and that's what is really important to me. When I first drove it a few days ago after driving my Audi all winter, I felt like I had to really hold on to the wheel extra-tight thru turns to counteract the lack of grip on the leather surface.