mx5cartalk.com

I always thought that the NB's interior trim was "too black" and dull so I "blinged it up" with some chrome trim but still found it to be too black. I saw some pictures of a red MX5 where a guy had painted some door trim components red to match the car and it looked great so I thoought I'd try that too. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the site and can't find it anymore.

"The guy" painted the door handles too but I figured that they would wear too frequently and left them OEM black. I also prefer to use Vinyl Dye instead of paint since it seeps into the plastic/vinyl and doesn't chip or flake like paint does.

I started with Septone's Satin Mid Grey paint since I couldn't find the right grey in a dye and prepped the door tweeter's door trim accordingly with the degreaser and adhesion primer:




That turned out way too light, much lighter than the can's cap colour (which looked like a perfect match), so I tracked down some VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye and tried that:




VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye is way too dark and almost black - it was hard to tell that there was any difference!

Here's the comparison between the two:



I wasn't happy with either of them so decided to try Tamiya's model aircraft paint since I knew that it wouldn't have any adverse reaction with the vinyl trim. I first tried Light Gun Metal, then German Grey.



The Light Gun Metal turned out almost the colour of the metal lead (ie. metallic silver flecks) and was too light:



It was obvious from this that Titanium Grey actually has a lot of blue in it (you can't really see it in these shots).

Here's some comparison shots between the VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye and Tamiya Light Gun Metal paint:



Next I tried the Tamiya German Grey paint (shots taken at night so lighting affected the colour):



Note: At this point I gave up masking the speaker covers to preserve the OEM black since the tweeters are an odd shape and took forever to mask.

Here's some comparisons between the VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye and Tamiya Light Gun Metal and German Grey paints:



I settled on the Tamiya German Grey and here's what the finished product looks like on my Gina after 4 light coats of Septone Clear Acrylic Topcoat:






Now it remains to be seen how the door trim holds up long-term - I'm hoping the acrylic topcoat will keep it lasting good for a few years.

Lokiel
Looks good
The different colour certainly hi-lights the different parts of the door trim.

Thanks for the write up and listing what you used and why you selected those products.

Great results for something so simple. Very cool.

Nice work.

Looks like you have a few spare door trims.

Wow great work and thanks for posting. Want to ask me how to spruced up those lightly scratched door sill protectors in another thread?

Hey that's actually come up quite well! I was pretty skeptical when I read the title, most cars I've seen advertised on Carsales.com.au with recoloured interior trim look nothing less than tacky. But I'm impressed!
Question though, I'm really wrapped with your seats. What are they?

Very tastefully done. good work. I think like others, I wasnt sure what I was going to see when I opened the post. Done well

nanotech wrote:Hey that's actually come up quite well! I was pretty skeptical when I read the title, most cars I've seen advertised on Carsales.com.au with recoloured interior trim look nothing less than tacky. But I'm impressed!
Question though, I'm really wrapped with your seats. What are they?

The seats are the OEM 2004 Mazda MX5 SE seats - black leather with red stitching.

I plan to retrim an old MX5 steering wheel (thanks MX5 Plus) and the inserts of the seats to match the German Grey of the door panels since the steering wheel does not match the colour of the door trim now.

Lokiel wrote:

nanotech wrote:Hey that's actually come up quite well! I was pretty skeptical when I read the title, most cars I've seen advertised on Carsales.com.au with recoloured interior trim look nothing less than tacky. But I'm impressed!
Question though, I'm really wrapped with your seats. What are they?

The seats are the OEM 2004 Mazda MX5 SE seats - black leather with red stitching.

I plan to retrim an old MX5 steering wheel (thanks MX5 Plus) and the inserts of the seats to match the German Grey of the door panels since the steering wheel does not match the colour of the door trim now.

Oh wow, I didn't know leater was actually oem (even if it's an se). I've only seen the standard nb seats. I have an na6 myself so black leather seats seem like a foriegn concept to me lol. I've seen some good leather retrim kits you can buy on ebay and that overpriced mx5 site, seem pretty easy to put on like seatcovers minus the original one. But the prices seem crazy, It was like $300 per seat, may as well just install aftermarket ones.
But all in all you've done really well, thank god you are using tastefull colours unlike some people I've seen who throw in this horrible 'ice white' onto random parts of the door cards and seat inlay lol. Makes it look like cheap plastic when they do that. Can't wait to see the finished product, keep uploading pics!

Well researched and well executed. It definitely lifts the interior without crossing over into being overdone.

Mr Morlock wrote:Well researched and well executed. It definitely lifts the interior without crossing over into being overdone.

+1

Well written too, great work, looks fantastic and very inspirational... now wondering if i can do something with the funky coloured crash bar that no longer matches the rest of tan inferior after 20yrs of sun