Towards an interior less terrible

I'd paid almost no attention to the interior of Mazda Amy so far, because there seemed like little point in doing so while I might still be in and out of there with tools and boots. And of course I left a ton of crap in there because just in case I need it for a future job on the car.

That left me with an interior looking like this:

Before picture of my interior: mucky, and with all sorts of mid-project crap in it.

Yeah, not really proud of it, but now there's a point in making it look nice.

In the best case scenario, this would be the first clean since 2007 when the car came off the road. It was pretty foul in there. My approach, if you care, was just brute force:

  • Everywhere: Lots of industrial hoover action!
  • Plastics: Cloth and soapy water on the plastics to get off any loose bits, then ZEP foaming citrus cleaner, sometimes in the reverse order if those bits were nasty. For the faded black bits, especially the dashboard, I hit them with WD-40 electrical contact cleaner (not at all to be confused with regular WD-40), then went over them with Gtechniq C4.
  • Carpets & seats: I used whatever worked; if I thought I could get a particular area clean with a damp soapy rag, I did. I used Vanish carpet cleaning spray in places. I had to resort to electrical contact cleaner where I saw proper oil. I was more careful about using water in these areas, of course, especially the seats.

Over four hours later:

A clean 323 GTX interior!

Much nicer. Seeing the interior looking lovely (look at all the purple and the 80s bits!!) was enough to remind me why I have spent so much money and time (mostly money) on this thing.

The reverse view, with lovely Driftworks steering wheel:

View from the other side, showing my cool steering wheel.

Next to arrive (tomorrow) is a blanking plate for that hole in the middle where the stereo should be and then I can call this done. Maybe I'll actually get a stereo in there some day!