Polar Bear

I have made the mistake of driving with my arm resting on the door panel for the past few years, and now my door panel has an area that is wrinkled as a result. I have seen other cars that are like this as well, so it appears to be a fairly common thing. Has anyone been able to develop a technique to smooth this back out?

OJwerks

I have seen people get rid of wrinkles in leather seats by heating up the area with a heat gun and going over it with a damp rag... but im not sure that would work in your situation, could probably even make it worse.. I may be wrong though.

burrito_bandito

MB tex or leather? on the rear seats of my 21 year old w124 i had a tool box on the rear seats that had the four corners dig into my mb tex. I was sort of upset to see what i've done so i decided to leave it alone, instead of making it worse. I came back the next morning and there wasn't a single trace of where the indents were. Very resilient material! If it doesn't go back on its own however, i'd do much more research before trying a self repair. heating the material would make it stretch, and the theory behind the damp rag is to make it quickly retract, thus tightening it. In theory it should work, but i don't want to make anyone responsible for this not working, so i'm going to say don't do it haha

Polar Bear

I actually tried the heat gun and an ice pack - the damp rag may work better since the ice pack did not contour with the material. The car is leather, but I am not sure the area on the top of the door panel differs. This area would be indented if I rested my arm there, and it would always disappear after an hour or so, but it got to where it stays. If the car sits for a week, the wrinkles remain there. I will try the damp rag trick. I am a little nervous with the heat gun so I may not be heating it enough. I will take it a small step at a time and see what happens. Otherwise I guess the fix would be a new door panel as the parts department at the dealer said this was not a seperate piece.

willy_manilly

Just buy a new door panel if it fails, im sure you could find a wrecked W211 to replace it.

Get it really hot then cool it down with a cold wet rag. If that doesn't work I guess the glue behind it is stuffed.