Restoring soft door and window trim on 360/430 - My method and results

Hey all you 360 and 430 owners!

I know there are some other discussions around this topic but I figured I'd share my great experience on how to restore the soft, felt / suede-like interior door and window trim that notoriously wears over time.

Here is the trim I'm talking about:
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As you can see, the part of this trim that comes into contact with the window itself wears pretty dramatically. Also, since my F430 is a spider, some of the edges that come into contact with the moving convertible parts also wear down.

So first off, let me say I've seen three methods posted on these threads:
1. Soft, felt-like tape that's about 1mm thick that simply adheres over the trim.
I've tried this method, and it's really only "okay," and only so when standing a few feet away. Which for me, isn't exactly good enough when it's something that you and your passenger are both constantly greeted by.

2. Replace the parts: this is expensive - like $1,000+ per door expensive. Which seems silly.

3. Restore the parts with new "flocking." Flocking is the name of this suede-like texture. It's used in a lot of race cars on things like dashboards to stop reflection in the windshield. It's also used in cheap-ass jewelry boxes... Ya know, in case you wanna race those.

I chose method #3: restore the flocking.
Now I can't take credit for this idea. I found another thread that did this same method. BUT, unlike that person, I didn't both to remove all of the trim to do it. Instead, I practiced applying on a random piece of old rubber in my garage. Then, I simply prepped the trim area by masking off everything I didn't want flocked in plastic with painters tape - images to follow.

Step 1: Buy this product - https://www.flockit.com/order/products/suede-tex-flock/suede-tex-mini-flocker-kits/suede-tex-nylon-mini-flock-kit-745 . This is enough for both doors, or at least it was for me. The kit includes the adhesive, a brush, the flocking material, and an applicator. So all you should need in addition to these things are some painters tape and painters sheets (I used plastic). Also, you'll probably want to wear a mask and gloves as you're dealing with adhesives and powder. And I suggest not wearing black gloves... Since the adhesive is black, you won't see if you accidentally got it on your hands and you may spread it somewhere you don't want (my little pro tip!).

Step 2: Do a practice run on any object. For me, this was an old piece of rubber. I painted on the black adhesive, loaded up the applicator, and shot the flocking at it. Once it dried in a few minutes, I held it up to my trim to make sure it would be a good match - and confirmed! It looked great. Also note, the applicator is a yellow tube that holds the flocking. It's two pieces that you sort of pump, and the air pressure shoots the flocking out of the holes on top - sort of like an old school water cannon pool toy. I taped all but one of the applicator's holes up so that way I could work in a smaller, more targeted area. Here's the applicator taped:
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Step 3: Prep your trim area. For me, I used blue painters tape (I like to stick the pieces on my shirt first, so when I apply them, they're even less sticky), and some plastic sheets. I sectioned off everything that I didn't want flocked with enough plastic inside the car to prevent any mess from blowing around. DO NOT RUSH THIS STEP. You want to get your painters tape all the way up the the rubber edge you want flocked. This will make it way easier to apply the adhesive and flocking.

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Step 4: Apply the adhesive to the worn parts first! I don't have a picture of this because it's hard to see anyway, as the adhesive itself is black and very liquidy. But I specifically only added the adhesive to the parts of the trim that were worn down. The thinking here was I wanted it to level out with the less-worn areas.

Step 5: Apply the flocking to the adhesive. This is pretty straightforward... Just start pumping and shooting the flocking at the parts with the adhesive. It's kind of hard to mess up since the goal is to get the adhesive completely covered. I waited about 5 minutes and reapplied a little more adhesive and flocking to any spots that weren't level until they were leveled out.

Step 6: Apply adhesive to any less-worn spots. Obviously the main focus was restoring the totally bare pieces of rubber with no flocking on it, but some parts weren't as deep black as the rest, implying they too were wearing down. So I added a light coat of adhesive to the majority of the trim and gave it all one last round of flocking.

Step 7: Let it dry, and remove your covering. DO NOT close the doors as they come into contact with this area. DO NOT roll up your windows as they obviously run up this area. Leave it to dry for a few hours at least, but ideally a couple days. You'll probably want to have a battery tender to not wear out the battery leaving the doors open, or at least disconnect your battery.

HERE IS THE END RESULT:
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You'll probably notice there is some excess flocking on parts of the car. That's okay! It's just loose stuff that was in the air. Just gently wipe it away with a cloth, it blows right away.

Final thoughts:
This was a fun project. It took me about 30 minutes total to do both sides. And about $60 worth of supplies to do it. I didn't do the bottom of the door jams, although mine could totally use it. I still have enough product left over that I could do the bottom of doors, so I'll likely do that next. But I'm very happy with how it turned out, and I think it actually looks better than factory. It seems the flocking material is very high quality, and since you can apply it pretty liberally, you can make it a little thicker than factory.

I hope this helps anyone else thinking of restoring their trim. I would definitely recommend this to anyone with a good attention to detail. Again, it's not hard, you just have to do a good job prepping the area.

 

Honestly, I’m counting on it doing better. We all know that Ferrari has a reputation of using some less-than-robust parts when it comes to the little details (anything other than the engine). In their defense, until recently, they don’t manufacture enough cars to perfect anything. And by the time they start getting feedback on quality, they’re already developing something new.
My experience with just about every aftermarket part for these cars is that these parts are better quality and often address design flaws.

So I’m hoping this stuff, as minor as it is, is no exception. I’d like to think that a guy whose only business is making weather proof flocking in the USA is making flocking better than whatever was sneezed out of China for Ferrari.

 

Good to know. I figured if adhesion was an issue, the simply answer is to change adhesives. The upper part of the trim that I did shouldn’t be getting kicked with shoes (unless someone’s got a wild pair of legs), so I’m hoping that holds up fine.

 

For $2800, assuming my $60 of stuff lets you do this twice, you can do this 93 times.
Let’s assume your new $2800 door jams look good for 10 years before they start wearing down (it’s probably even less than that)… I don’t know how well my method will hold up, but I’m confident I won’t be doing it 93 times in 10 years…

So silly… There’s Ferrari tax, then there’s just full blown taking advantage of the fact most wealthy people will spend whatever on whatever, whenever.