Gooey Buttons Un-Stickied
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Super Member
Joined: May 2019
Posts: 671
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From: Omaha, NE
2007 S600
Gooey Buttons Un-Stickied
Yesterday, with nothing to lose, I decide to give cleaning off the steering wheel controls on my '07 S600 a try. I say nothing to lose, because I have a brand new set in hand. If I ruined the old ones, it's not big deal -- they were coming out anyway. I have read numerous threads about getting the gooey coating off of these controls, with various pictures of buttons that look much worse than they started. Baking soda, gasoline, various solvents, alcohol, and so on. Most seem to have been failures, which is why I hadn't tried before.
I started off with some Meguiar's interior detail spray and a microfiber cloth. Zero impact. Tried some glass cleaner just because I had it handy -- nothing. It has alcohol in it, so I don't think the alcohol and Q-Tip method would have been very productive. Next I pulled out the big guns. We have both Goo Gone and Goof Off on hand. Despite the passing similarity of their names, these two products are nothing at all alike. Goo Gone is more of a turpentine or pine oil smell to it; Goof Off is more like naptha. I tried the Goo Gone first, with very little impact - if any at all. Then I tried a little Goof Off on a clean cotton rag. Success!! The Goof Off completely removed the sticky coating in just a few minutes, and left the underlying black and white plastic completely intact. No damage to the steering wheel/airbag material either. I used a couple of toothpicks to get in all the little crevices around the outside and get the last of the partially dissolved goop out of there.
The results are spectacular. The solvent removed only the deteriorated soft-touch coating and nothing else. The controls look and feel like brand new, they are completely free of any stickiness. I was prepared to pull the airbag off to replace them; now I don't need to.
Anybody want to buy a brand new set of steering wheel buttons, still in the M-B dealer packaging?
I started off with some Meguiar's interior detail spray and a microfiber cloth. Zero impact. Tried some glass cleaner just because I had it handy -- nothing. It has alcohol in it, so I don't think the alcohol and Q-Tip method would have been very productive. Next I pulled out the big guns. We have both Goo Gone and Goof Off on hand. Despite the passing similarity of their names, these two products are nothing at all alike. Goo Gone is more of a turpentine or pine oil smell to it; Goof Off is more like naptha. I tried the Goo Gone first, with very little impact - if any at all. Then I tried a little Goof Off on a clean cotton rag. Success!! The Goof Off completely removed the sticky coating in just a few minutes, and left the underlying black and white plastic completely intact. No damage to the steering wheel/airbag material either. I used a couple of toothpicks to get in all the little crevices around the outside and get the last of the partially dissolved goop out of there.
The results are spectacular. The solvent removed only the deteriorated soft-touch coating and nothing else. The controls look and feel like brand new, they are completely free of any stickiness. I was prepared to pull the airbag off to replace them; now I don't need to.
Anybody want to buy a brand new set of steering wheel buttons, still in the M-B dealer packaging?
