[FlowerpowerMD]

For anyone out there like me that would have no idea or skill to remove dash pieces, the price for the pros to do it is even worse than I thought. I was told by a guy that used to work at a VW dealership who now has his own shop that the labor alone to remove and reinstall a complete NB dash would be about 15 hours.

Therefore, when I look for another NB some day, I'll focus on ones that still have decent-looking interiors.

Greetings from hot sunny Florida. My name is Mark, and I have just posted my 1st thread as a new Beetle owner in a different area of this site. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a problem that I resolved this weekend. I just traded a vintage car for a New Beetle. I was a but apprehensive, as the interior of the car seemed destroyed by the Florida heat, or so I thought. I was not sure what the problem was, so i just attemped to clean it with "The Purple Power" cleaner available at Auto Zone. I have used this many times for different reasons. This stuff will take the crome off a trailer hitch!!! It cleaned all the black grime out of the gooey, stickey plastic interior, but every single piece of interior plastic still had that weird feeling of 3M rubber cement-like texture. After reading this forum, I tried a remedy that worked MIRACLES!!! Rubbing alcohol and the green scrungie pads from Walmart. The interior of my NB is sanatized better than the local hospital operating room now, from all the alcohol. It took a few days, but well worth the efforts. Thank you to everyone who posted their efforts and suggestions. I would not have thought alcohol would work. Alcohol belongs on ice in my cocktail glass, not on the interior of my car! (wink)

 

[FlowerpowerMD]

Replying to and following this thread for when I get back to addressing on my beetlebug. I thought I was imagining things with the sticky, gooey plastic, and then scratched the middle of my dash up. But I see now that it really is the coating and there are a number of ideas here ranging from taking everything apart and power washing or sand blasting to masking the non-gooey parts and spraying an acrylic coating. I am curious if others have done different techniques more recently. Love my car so far and want it to be non-sticky.